“Hacking Your Body”: Femtech’s Self-Tracking as a (Re)productive and Biopolitical Practice in the Neoliberal Era
Fé Versteeg
HUM211: Late Modernity
Word Count: 2535
HUM211: Late Modernity
Word Count: 2535
Abstract
Femtech is often lauded for being a “long-overdue corrective” to a technology industry dominated and tailored towards men. Yet whilst the apps that fall under the category of femtech purport to “empower” its users, this paper argues that the apps make their users more, rather than less, vulnerable through the commodification of their data and the exclusion of certain identities. In fact, this paper argues femtech apps have the dual objective of reinforcing the existing power structures of neoliberal capitalism. It outlines how femtech apps drive capital accumulation both as a productive force, and as a supplement to reproductive labour. Finally, the paper explores the biopolitics of femtech, and how it reinforces the corporate and entrepreneurial logics of neoliberal capitalism.
Femtech has been lauded as a “long-overdue corrective” to a technology industry long dominated by and tailored towards men (Kressbach, 2019, p. 242). In reality, the apps do little to empower women, and rather reinforce the existing power structures of neoliberal capitalism. In fact, this paper illustrates how femtech apps are an instrument for capital accumulation both as a productive force, and as a supplement to reproductive activity. It discusses how femtech technologies make its users more, rather than less, vulnerable through commodification and alienation. Lastly, it explores the biopolitical side of femtech, and how the apps reinforce the corporate and entrepreneurial logic of neoliberalism.
Whilst logging intimate information on femtech platforms is often seen as a means towards “self-knowledge” and “self-improvement” unrelated to the employment relationship, it is in fact a capital accumulation-driving activity (Ewen, 2017, p. 237). Like others investigating the interrelation between digital activity and capital, McEwen (2017) builds her notion of digital self-tracking as “productive for capital” on Marx's basic argument that under capitalism, surplus-value is created through the exploitation of labour power: as surplus-value requires selling a commodity for more than it costs to produce it, it is necessary the capitalist pays the worker less than the value her labour produces (p. 237, 238). In this context, self-tracking on femtech platforms is also a surplus-generating labour activity: companies extract value from its unwaged performance through multiple pathways, of which most profitable is the harvesting and selling of self-tracked data to third parties, who proceed to use this data mainly for marketing and advertising purposes (Roetmans, 2020, p. 2; McEwen, 2017, p. 238). As such, the logging of information such as mood, menstruation and physical activity on femtech platforms can be conceived as a form of unwaged “digital labour”, generating data that can be sold as a commodity (p. 238). Drawing on Jarrett (2016), McEwen further finds that this notion of “digital labour” can especially be understood in the framework of the “social factory”, an Autonomist Marxist concept that describes the post-Fordist relations by which “various life processes, once deemed exterior to the commodity relation, have become integral to the economic calculations of capital” (Jarrett 2016, p. 140, as cited by McEwen, 2017, p. 238). In other words, McEwen (2017) and others argue that the lines between work and non-work activities have become increasingly blurred, and that digital labour activities are herein exemplary (p. 238). Whereas keeping track of one’s menstruation, mood, and other intimate details on femtech platforms appears a highly personal experience outside of the economic domain, it is in reality a profit-generating labour activity within the post-Fordist social factory.
Alongside its capacity to produce surplus-value, it can be argued that the use of femtech apps is productive for capital when seeing it as a supplement to reproductive activity (Roetman, 2020, p. 2). Fraser (2016) argues that reproductive practises such as affective care, raising children, and maintaining social connections are vital to capitalist society, as they sustain economic production (p. 99). However, she argues, these practices have been threatened by a new financialized form of capitalism arising in the 80s, which–characterised by state disinvestment from social welfare arrangements and an increased recruitment of women into the labour force–has externalised reproductive practices onto families while simultaneously undermining their ability to engage in them (Fraser, 2016, p. 104). Consequently, Fraser argues, reproductive activity is “privatised” for poor classes, whilst it is “commodified” for those who can afford to delegate it to women of the former category and find employment elsewhere (Fraser, 2016, p. 104, 112). Similarly, femtech apps allow those that can afford its technologies to outsource a more personal form of reproductive labour by performing the “caring work” for the female body (Roetmans, 2020, p. 4). It allows users to efficiently generate knowledge of and care for their minds and bodies, for example by helping them anticipate energy levels, moods and fertility and giving directions on how to act upon this knowledge through algorithm-generated personal health plans. It herein aids in the reproduction of the labour force not because it allows users to care for those around them, but because it lets them care for and control their own bodies, hereby cultivating the “productive subject” (McEwen, 2017, p. 244; McEwen, 2017, p. 235 as cited by Roetmans, 2020, p. 4). Femtech is then doubly productive for capital, as its users perform both the digital labour of data production and the reproductive labour of caring for their wage-labouring bodies.
The cultivation of an efficient labour force through femtech apps is not always an implicit process of making self-care more efficient. It also operates through more direct channels, as in addition to being sold for marketing purposes femtech data is often also sold to employers, which in turn use this data to monitor their female workforce (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 14). Fears about the potential for surveillance and discriminatory practices that the femtech-employer alliance could give rise to have dominated critical discourse from its outset, but were realized after a 2019 Washington Post article revealed that the company Activision Blizzard encouraged its female workers to download the menstrual and fertility self-tracking app Ovia. The company used the data Ovia generated to monitor which of their female workers were highly fertile, trying to conceive or pregnant and whether these pregnancies were high-risk or not, in order to, in Ovia’s promotional words, “cut back on medical costs” (Harwell, 2019, §25). Whilst operating “under the banner of corporate wellness”, employer’s dealing in intimate information as such sets the stage for discrimination against pregnant workers, or workers with high-risk pregnancies in order to dial down on health-care spending–a discrimination which would cultivate a maximally “efficient” group of employees (Harwell, 2019, §25). In the neoliberal context in which femtech operates, which is characterised by the rise of short-term and precarious employment conditions and diminished abilities to unionise, the apps further increase precarity by giving employers more grounds for abusive hiring-and-firing practises (Lorey, 2015, p. 6). This redemonstrates how femtech commodifies intimate details, but more crucially how in a social context where the nature of labour is already extremely precarious, femtech makes its users even more vulnerable to the loss of income.
This is not the only way in which femtech makes its users vulnerable. To articulate these effects, Jacobs and Evers (2019) define femtech technologies as a “pathogenic” source of vulnerability (p. 13). Pathogenic vulnerability is generated when something that is meant to alleviate an existing form of vulnerability has the adverse effect: it makes the individual even more vulnerable, or generates new vulnerabilities (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 13). To further illustrate these effects, the authors discuss an example of a transgender man who uses the app Flo to monitor his cycle to mitigate any unease or surprise that comes with his menstruation (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 14). His existing vulnerability is that his body functions in a way dissonant to his perception of how it should function (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 14). However, the user finds himself greeted with “hey girl” and is confronted by a stereotypically “feminine” layout when opening Flo: the app sketches menstruation as something unique to women, and appears particularly concerned with the “fertility” of its users (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 14). The transgender user does not want to be addressed as a woman nor be repeatedly reminded of his fertility, thus Flo increases rather than reduces his subjective vulnerability (Jacobs & Evers, 2019, p. 14). Similar effects may arise with non-binary users, or as Jacobs and Evers (2019) argue, anyone else that does not conform to the heterosexual, fertile cis-woman that the young white men currently dominating the femtech industry imagine as their audience (p. 14). Indeed, femtech apps such as Flo also alienate rather than aid users with irregular menstrual cycles or fertility issues, depicting a steady menstrual cycle as a reflection that “your body is working normally”, and in the case of the app Clue directly stating that if one has unstable cycle this means “something is not working as it should be” (“Clue Period Tracker”, 2019, §1 as cited by Kressbach, 2019, p. 249). As such, those that do fit the narrowly-defined standards that femtech imposes are already made vulnerable when their intimate experiences are commodified and used against them, but those who fall outside of its norm are further made vulnerable as the legitimacy of their identity is repeatedly questioned.
Pointing out the ways in which femtech defines certain people and processes as “normal” also lays the ground for questioning if it is a modern instrument of biopower. “Biopower” is a term articulated in the late writings of Foucault, describing a form of power that began to pervade the capitalist social order from the 1700s onwards and which focuses on the “vitality of the body” and the “biological existence of the population” (Ajana, 2017, p. 5). Foucault described the technologies and rationalities by which this power operates as “biopolitics”, which function to control and normalise the body implicitly rather than through outright coercion (Ajana, 2017, p. 5). As argued by Ajana (2017), this control and normalisation “begins with the self itself”, by managing its “performance and productivity” (p. 5). In turn, this self-management first requires “an understanding of [the body’s] vital characteristics and activities”, and femtech provides just that to its users: by logging weight, mood ratings, energy levels and other metrics throughout the month, the body becomes easier to understand as numerical patterns can be discerned and used to make predictions (p. 5). Femtech defines what is “normal” in terms of fertility, sex drive, and as mentioned, the menstrual cycle in general, and its algorithms compare its user’s data to these norms (Ajana, 2017, p. 13). Femtech apps not only yield the quantification and comparisons required for self-management, but also directly provide the techniques: the apps give advice on how to benefit from certain cycle phases to increase energy levels, and allows users to personalise the app to “get notifications about weight, sleep, water intake, step goal, and birth control” in order to micro-manage their health (“Flo Period and Ovulation Tracker”, 2021, §1). As such, femtech can be regarded as an incarnation of a “biopolitics of the self”, whereby the body is regarded as an object that can, and should, be managed (Ajana, 2017, p. 5).
The ways in which this self-management of the body through femtech both echoes and reinforces the ethos of neoliberal capitalism cannot be ignored. Firstly, it illustrates how neoliberal corporate logic has extrapolated into the personal sphere: the practises of femtech instigate individuals to see themselves as “projects” and “mini-corporations” that require improvement and investment, rendering the individual an “entrepreneur of the self” (Ajana, 2017, p. 4). The idea that every aspect of human existence is rendered an entrepreneurial existence in neoliberalism is also reiterated by Brown, who reasons that as competition becomes the main principle of the market, its actors become perceived as capitals that require entrepreneurship (2015, p. 65). In this context, the neoliberal subject is held personally responsible for its own health and wellbeing and the ability to fulfil these needs is seen as dependent on one’s entrepreneurial capacities, rather than being the responsibility of the state (Harvey, 2005, p. 65). Femtech and other self-tracking technologies serve to further push the responsibility for healthcare from state institutions towards the individual, herein reifying a conception of the subject as an “entrepreneurial subject” (Ajana, 2017, p. 4). Femtech encourages its users to “take matters into their own hands” rather than depend on established health services, even though many medical practitioners have issued warnings against the reliability of the apps (Kressbach, 2019, p. 242). Femtech can therefore be seen as an instrument of neoliberalism in that it perpetuates its corporate and entrepreneurial logic, sometimes with dire consequences.
References
Ajana, B. (2017). Digital Health and the Biopolitics of the Quantified Self. Digital Health, 3, 1-18. doi:10.1177/2055207616689509
Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (1st ed.). Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books
Clue Period & Cycle Tracker (2019). Retrieved from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clue-period-cycle-tracker/id657189652
Clue Period & Cycle Tracker (2021). Retrieved from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clue-period-cycle-tracker/id657189652
Deleuze, G. (1992.). Postscripts on the Societies of Control. October, 59, 3-7.
Flo Period Tracker. (2019). Retrieved from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flo-period-ovulation-tracker/id1038369065
Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of Capitalism and Care. New Left Review, (100), 99-117.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harwell, D. (2019, April 10). Is your pregnancy app sharing your intimate data with your boss? Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/10/tracking-your-pregnancy-an-app-may-be-more-public-than-you-think/
Jacobs, N., & Evers, J. (2019). De Kwetsbaarheid van Femtech. Podium Voor Bio-ethiek, 26(4), 13-15.
Jarrett, K. (2014). The Relevance of Women’s Work: Social Reproduction and Immaterial Labor in Digital Media. Television & New Media, 15(1), 14-29. doi:10.1177/1527476413487607
Kressbach, M. (2019). Period hacks: Menstruating in the big data paradigm. Television & New Media, 22(3), 241-261.
doi:10.1177/1527476419886389
Lorey, I. (2015). State of Insecurity - Government of the Precarious. London: Verso (Introduction: The Government of the Precarious: pp. 1-15 & Chapter 4: pp. 63-71)
McEwen, K. D. (2017). Self-Tracking Practices and Digital (Re)productive Labour. Philosophy & Technology, 31(2), 235-251. doi:10.1007/s13347-017-0282-2
Roetman, S. (2020). Self-Tracking ‘Femtech’: Commodifying & Disciplining the Fertile Female Body. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 1-4. doi:10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11320
Vuorinen, J., & Bergroth, H. (2020). Self-tracking, power, and the transition from discipline to control. Human-Centric Computing in a Data-Driven Society, 351–360. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-62803-1_28
Evaluating Feminist Theories of Gender
Daniel Xu
Word Count: 2133
Word Count: 2133
Abstract
When considering what defines a woman, Feminist theorists have generally subscribed to one of two theories of gender: that of biological essentialism – i.e. that there are (biological) properties that all women must share, and social constructionism – i.e. that woman is a product of interpretation shaped by historical and cultural context. The former theory is often criticised for privileging specific forms of femininity and excluding others – which I call the normativity problem, whereas the latter theory suffers from what I call the representation problem – that there are no commonalities by which women may be united. This essay provides a selective exposition of different feminist theorists, and how they navigate the normativity and representation problems.
One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilisation as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine. (2011, p. 330)
However, feminist philosophy has as its normative and political backdrop the issue of female liberation. Therefore, feminist theories of gender are guided by not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also feminist praxis; explicitly or implicitly, feminist theories of gender are both a description and a prescription.
The social constructionist view – i.e. that gender is a product of human interpretation shaped by historical and cultural context – was a reaction to the observation that the essentialist understanding of woman justified “women’s confinement to the domestic sphere as natural and necessary”, whilst also “effectively normalis[ing] and privileg[ing] specific forms of femininity” (Stone, 2004, pp. 135, 139). I will refer to this as the normativity problem. For instance, Elizabeth Spellman (1988) identified that feminists had taken the position of white middle-class women as representative of the condition of all women (p. 3). Seeing that gender did not exist independently from race and class, she proposed that “females become not simply women, but particular kinds of women” (pp. 113, 136). She explicitly called for feminist theory to “include more of the experiences of women of different races and classes” (p. 163).
On the other hand, taken to its post-structuralist conclusion, anti-essentialism denies that there are any commonalities – biological or social – between all women; it denies the very idea of a coherent category of woman (Stone, 2004, p. 141). Proponents saw the result as a “free play of a plurality of differences unhampered by any predetermined gender identity” (Alcoff, 1988, p.418). The problem to feminist politics was that it denied the existence of any shared characteristics between women that could motivate them to act together as a collective (Stone, 2004, pp. 135-136). Moreover, how can one talk about ending the oppression of women whilst simultaneously denying ‘woman’ as a distinct, extant, group (one thinks of the reactionary’s claim “I’m not racist because I don’t see colour”). I refer to this as the representation problem.
What follows first is a brief and selective exposition of feminist theories of gender and how they navigate between the problems of normativity and representation, followed by a reflection on how theories of gender are/can be evaluated.
Normativity
versus
Representation
Judith Butler’s gender as performativity is explicitly guided by the normativity problem. Indeed, she opens Gender Trouble (1999) with “‘Women’ as the Subject of Feminism” (p. 3), suggesting that feminism’s construction of the category of woman as a coherent and stable subject implies that there is a ‘correct’ way to be gendered woman, which unwittingly reifies and regulates gender relations (pp. 5-9). Rather, for Butler, gender is the societally validated and accepted social role performed by individuals; a “stylised repetition of acts. […] [T]he appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity […] which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and perform in the mode of belief” (p. 179). Butler thus rejects the normative notions of universality, authenticity, and authority in feminist discourse. Her prescription: subversive bodily acts – parodic repetitions of the ‘original’ that reveal the original to be “nothing other than a parody of the idea of the natural and the original” (pp. 41, 174-177). In Bodies That Matter (1993), Butler then partially rescues her theory of gender from the representation problem by denying a self that precedes or exists outside of gender; “the ‘I’ neither precedes nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within the matrix of gender relations themselves” (p. 7). In this way, woman remains an essential attribute that one can appeal to for unifying collective action; the defining properties being a set of contingent and relational cultural practices.
Iris Marion Young (1994) starts with the representation problem, that without “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective, there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (p. 714). Moreover, it is “not possible to conceptualise oppression as a systematic, structured and institutional process” without some understanding of woman as a group (p. 718). Nevertheless, to avoid the normativity problem, Young does not turn to essentialism, but to Sartre’s concept of series (see Sartre, 1960, pp. 256-259). A series is a group that is “vast, multifaceted, layered, complex and overlapping” (Young, 1994, p. 728). Membership of a series does not require any essential attributes, but depend on a passive unification “by the objects [that] their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (p. 724). Put simply, members of a series find themselves in similar circumstances by objects that structure some part of their life; e.g. passengers waiting for a train would be members of a series. However, in the words of the Bard, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Young’s insistence of woman’s group status for political action implicitly recreates the essentialism that she had tried to avoid. Young must on the one hand insist that there are no common features defining woman, yet on the other hand, insist that women’s lives are “orientated around the same or similarly structured objects” (p. 728). How can we understand these ‘same objects’ without some normative and universal framework?
Sally Haslanger offers a functional theory of gender, motivated to “usefully revise what we mean [by woman] for certain theoretical and political purposes” (2000, p. 34). She argues that conceptual notions of gender are vague and ill-suited to the task at hand (be it theory or praxis). Instead, Haslanger provides an analytic (re-)definition of woman that tries to address both the normativity problem and representation problem. First, woman is defined according to a suitably abstract, culturally contingent, relational property (1 and 2 below), addressing the normativity problem. Second, it applies an ontologically thin defining attribute (3 below), answering the representation problem. Presented formally (p. 42),
S is a woman if, and only if
- S is regularly and for the most part observed or imagined to have certain bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction;
- that S has these features marks S within the dominant ideology of S’s society as someone who ought to occupy certain kinds of social position that are in fact subordinate (and so motivates and justifies S’s occupying such a position); and
- the fact that S satisfies (1) and (2) plays a role in S’s systematic subordination, i.e., along some dimension, S’s social position is oppressive, and S’s satisfying (1) and (2) plays a role in that dimension of subordination.
Or, in layman’s terms, a woman is someone systematically oppressed by virtue of their perceived or real bodily features. The bodily features are abstract and mutable, thus avoiding the normativity problem; whilst the shared subordination retains the possibility of collective action, solving the representation problem. This functionally reductive approach may seem intuitive at first, but when taken to its logical conclusion implies that the category of woman would cease to exist if oppression too were brought to an end. Thus, though Haslanger may have formulated a theory of woman adequate for immediate practical use, it comes at the cost of unstable metaphysical foundations.
More rooted in the ‘real’ world of politics and activism, Denise Riley claims that it is not incompatible to hold an anti-essentialist view of woman, whilst maintaining an essentialist understanding for political purposes, since “the world behaves as if they unambiguously did” (1982, p. 112). Although Riley subscribes to the essentialist view of gender, she considers playing by the ‘rules’ of political institutions that treat woman as a unitary category to be politically expedient. I am reminded here of Gayatri Spivak’s strategic essentialism, a temporary essentialism that creates solidarity and a sense of belonging to mobilise for social action (Ashcroft, 1998, pp.159-160). However, Stone (2004) asserts that “one cannot defend essentialism on strategic grounds without first showing that there is a homogenous set of essentialist assumptions that exerts a coherent influence on women’s social experience” (pp. 143-144). In other words, Riley cannot maintain both, that women’s experience is uniformly structured by social institutions along with essentialist assumptions, whilst also maintaining that women’s social experience is fully diverse. Mari Mikkola (2009) avoids the problem altogether and argues that feminists “need not define woman in order to mark off the relevant social kind for feminist politics” (p. 561). Mikkola contends that any revisionary analysis of woman is an “unhelpful and unnecessary” perpetual worry (pp. 581). Rather, public intuition is sufficient to demarcate what constitutes woman for feminist politics, and indeed, feminist philosophers should adapt their conceptions of gender to “ordinary language users” and “everyday thinking” (p. 575).
Description versus Prescription
What becomes immediately apparent from my above (albeit selective) exposition of feminist theories of gender is that theories of gender are progressive at their core. Each thinker is ultimately motivated by what they consider would advance the socio-political cause of feminism. Butler, in avoiding the normative notions of universality, authenticity, and authority wants to include a wider range of voices and more participation in feminist discourse. Young aims to make the category of woman more intelligible as a rallying focus for feminist politics. Haslanger explicitly admits that she wants to advance a suitable theory of gender for theoretical and political purposes. Even Riley and Mikkola, who seek to avoid entering the debate on defining gender, do so because they believe such a debate is unfruitful to feminist praxis.
It is evident therefore that theories of gender are in the first instance prescriptive, but not necessarily descriptive. In other words, a theory of gender could advance some normative way of understanding gender, without necessarily making any metaphysical claims on defining the category of gender. Indeed, many of the above theories of gender possess dubious metaphysical foundations, or overcome their metaphysical complications by performing linguistic somersaults à la Wittgenstein (in my opinion!). Moreover, there seems to be a bizarre asymmetrical relationship between the descriptive and prescriptive components of gender theories, wherein the prescriptive desirability directs the (re-)formulation of the descriptive metaphysics. Put differently, it seems completely coherent to reformulate a metaphysics of gender on the grounds that the voices of women of colour are not adequately included; yet no one would advocate abandoning the voices of women of colour in the interests of a better metaphysical formulation. This appears to contradict the tradition of ancient and modern western philosophy, which seek not to redefine metaphysics based on normative judgements, but rather make normative judgements based on metaphysics (but maybe this is the point!). In the final instance then, theories of gender are (and I argue should) be evaluated on the basis of their prescriptive component, i.e. what are the implications of a given theory for society and politics.
By way of conclusion, two questions come to mind. The first is whether we can consider gender to still belong within the realm of metaphysics and ontology if theories of gender are not evaluated in terms of their metaphysical acceptability; has gender not become the sole domain of ethics? In other words, do we still consider gender in terms of what is true, or in terms of what is right? The second is why should we not evaluate theories of gender by taking into account both description and prescription; why not assess both the metaphysics and societal-political implications?
To answer the first question, I ironically have to turn to essentialism – the manner in which a thing is assessed is entailed by its essence, but a thing’s essence is not entailed by its mode of assessment. Butler, Young, Haslanger, Riley, and Mikkola examine the existence and nature of things; by virtue of the very subject of inquiry, theories of gender remain in the realm of metaphysics, despite the fact that they are not evaluated as metaphysical theories but on their socio-political implications. To address the second question, I argue that theories of gender ought to be evaluated on the purpose for which they were written, which in all cases discussed above, is formulating a theory of gender amenable to feminist praxis. So long as the metaphysical component is logically valid (which is different from an exercise of normative evaluation), then we should consider only the societal-political implications of such a theory for the feminist movement.
References
Alcoff, L. (1988). Cultural Feminism versus Post-structuralism. Signs, 13(3), 405-436.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1998). Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York and London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1999/1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge.
De Beauvoir, S. (2011/1949). The Second Sex. New York: Random House.
Haslanger, S. (2000). Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be? Nous, 34(1), 31-55.
Mikkola, M. (2009). Gender Concepts and Intuitions. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 39(4), 559-583.
Riley, D. (1982). Am I That Name: Feminism and the Category of Woman in History. London: Macmillan.
Sartre, J. (1960). Critique of Dialectical Reason. Volume 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles. A. Sheridan-Smith (Trans.). London: New Left Books.
Spelman, E. (1988). Inessential Woman. Boston: Beacon Press.
Stone, A. (2004). Essentialism and Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Philosophy. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 1(2), 135–153.
Stone, A. (2007). An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Young. I. M. (1994). Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective. Signs, 19(3), 713-738.
From Compassion to Action: Why Young Dutch Volunteers Choose to Make a Difference in the Disability Sector
Hester van der Weij, Joelle Klein, Jamilia Walhof, & Leonor Fernandes
INT202: Qualitative Research through Interviewing
Word Count: 4667
INT202: Qualitative Research through Interviewing
Word Count: 4667
Abstract
This study explores the motivations of young Dutch volunteers, of whom there is a current deficit in the Netherlands, to start and continue volunteering with people with disabilities. A qualitative approach through interviewing was taken, and data was analysed using multiple coding strategies.
Results showed that personality traits and exposure to volunteering influenced the following motivations: values relating to altruistic/humanitarian concerns, personal gains, social influences, career development, and uncertain motivations. Based on any barriers and possible benefits, participants chose to start/continue volunteering. Findings support parts of social learning theory, volunteer function inventory, attachment theory, rational choice model, and octagon model. In addition to past research’s conclusions, uncertain volunteer motivations were found, which paves the way for future research.
Researching the motivations of young volunteers may encourage the development of revised recruitment strategies; for volunteering organisations to reduce the current Dutch volunteer deficit.
Since 2012, there has been a fall in Dutch volunteer numbers, the biggest plummet being amongst volunteers under the age of 30 (CBS, 2020). Of all volunteering sectors, the disability sector suffers from the largest young-volunteer deficit (Devilee, 2005). Volunteering programmes play an important role in people’s lives; people with disabilities greatly benefit from and rely on the kindness of strangers. As such, it is of great societal relevance to explore why people decide to volunteer (Devilee, 2005). Inquiring into volunteers’ motivations for aiding disabled persons can benefit volunteer recruitment strategies for this sector (Caldron et al., 2017).
Research on motives is usually approached from a sociological (symbolic) or psychological (functional) perspective. The symbolic approach considers motivations as a collection of cultural understandings, whereas the most-used-in-research functional approach considers motives to be expressions of existing needs and dispositions that fuel individuals’ actions (Clary & Snyder, 1999; Hustinx, Cnaan, & Handy, 2010).
Although the study of volunteering has produced significant theoretical and conceptual models such as the volunteer function inventory and social learning theory, certain theoretical gaps persist. This study will theoretically and qualitatively explore motivations of young Dutch adults to start and continue to volunteer within the disabled sector. This study will use the ‘expand & elaborate’ research method, using inductive reasoning to expand theories. This paper strives to form an integrated theory of motivational accounts by combining the volunteer function inventory (VFI) approach with two functional approaches - attachment theory and rational-choice model - and with the symbolic social learning theory (SLT) approach.
Literature Review
Definitions of volunteering have permeable boundaries; making studying and understanding volunteering a particularly difficult task. The degree to which an act is considered volunteering tends to be subjective and hard to measure. Nonetheless, researchers provide a framework that defines volunteering, namely: “(1) free will; (2) availability and nature of remuneration; (3) the proximity to the beneficiaries; and (4) a formal agency” (Hustinx et al., 2010, p. 414). In other terms, volunteers must choose to volunteer (i.e. not be forced or coerced), they may not be financially compensated for their work, there should be some distance between volunteer and beneficiaries (i.e. helping a close friend/family is not considered volunteer work), and lastly volunteer opportunities tend to be provided by agencies in somewhat organized/formal fashion.
After decades of research, social scientists continue to investigate why volunteers spend time and effort to help others (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2014; Cornelis, van Hiel, & de Cremer, 2013). In one way, this question is addressed by the altruism-egoism debate. Some researchers suggest that motivations of volunteers stem from urges to increase others’ welfare, or from a wish to contribute to their community. Others propose that seemingly altruistic motivations are actually driven by egoistic concerns for one’s own wellbeing (Cornelis et al., 2013). Most researchers however recognise that both sides of the altruism-egoism debate yield valid arguments and thus overwhelmingly support the notion that motivations stem from both altruistic and egoistic concerns. Although ambivalent, this altruism-egoism hypothesis has become the foundation of many motivational theories of volunteering (Kassin et al., 2014). Building on the altruism-egoism hypothesis, other prominent theories in the study of volunteering have been developed such as the volunteer function inventory, social learning theory and cost-benefit analysis. Other theories such as attachment theory and the qualitative octagon model are less prominent, though important to consider since the former clashes with the volunteer function inventory, and the latter is a qualitative model that is under researched.
Clary and colleagues (1998) explain how the volunteer function inventory (VFI) consists of six categories used to study volunteers’ motivations (Einolf & Chambré, 2011). It assumes people volunteer to fulfil psychological and social needs, which can be grouped into certain categories (Same, McBride, Liddelow, Mullan, & Harris, 2020). Categories consist of (1) values, (2) understanding, (3) enhancement, (4) career, (5) social, and (6) protective (Hustinx et al., 2010). The values category explains how motives are a means of expressing one’s humanitarian and altruistic principles. The category of understanding explains one may volunteer to gain abilities, skills and knowledge. Motivations that fall in the enhancement category are ones that help develop and grow the ego. Career motivations include the ones that are a way of improving one’s career prospects. The social category entails motivations as means of fostering and strengthening social bonds. Lastly, the protective category is based on the negative state relief model (NSRM). As Kassin, Fein, and Markus (2014) explain, individuals following this model use volunteering as an opportunity to escape negative emotions they may have experienced (recently).
Despite its widespread use, the VFI is criticised for being eclectic and lacking a grounded theoretical base. Moreover, its (respondent) bias towards the deductive method offers respondents pre-set answers; as it divides motives into categories, respondents are more likely to choose the socially desirable option (Hustinx et al., 2010; Wilson, 2012).
On the other hand, attachment theory claims to have high predictive ability; it postulates that individuals will only invest time and energy into helping others once they feel emotionally secure (Wilson, 2012). Although this can often be the case, the NSRM category of the VFI contradicts the attachment theory in this way. Moreover, other theorists such as Olson (2009) argue that volunteers perform a cost-benefit analysis before volunteering. Only once a volunteer pinpoints volunteering’s (material) incentives, and costs are outweighed, will the volunteer partake in the activity (Olson, 2009). For example, one will volunteer only if the benefits of putting volunteering work on their CV outweigh the costs of using personal time. Thus, based on rational-choice rhetoric, motives for volunteering are egoistic. Lee and Brudney (2009) build further on Olson’s theory, stating that volunteering activities decrease when opportunity cost of volunteering increases.
Finally, social learning theory (SLT) postulates that people learn from their perpetually changing surroundings, moulding their knowledge, beliefs, and actions over time (Thyer & Myers, 1998). Whilst this theory has been ground-breaking across the field of psychology, its application within motive-framework for volunteering has been largely neglected. When SLT is applied to volunteer research, its scope is limited to the parental transmission model: parents taking up volunteer work influence their children to do the same (Bekkers, 2007). However, SLT can also provide insight into our interviewees’ symbolic motives by including friends and other family members’ influence on volunteering.
Most of the existing research on volunteers’ motives is based on quantitative research (Same et al., 2020). Of the qualitative research that has been conducted, Yeung (2004) notably pinpoints underlying sources of motivations by looking into volunteers’ experience and what it means to them. Yeung conceptualised the different motivations for volunteering in an octagon model with four dimensions of motivational elements: (1) getting to giving, (2) action to thought, (3) proximity to distance, and (4) continuity to newness, which are not separate entities but share an interactive relation (see Figure 1).
Each of these four arrows include opposing motivational forces: The ‘getting to giving’ arrow represents the altruism-egoism debate spectrum: volunteer motivations vary along a spectrum of volunteering to “get something from it” to “to give something” to others. The “action” to “thought” arrow represents how while some take up volunteering to occupy their free time, others do it because of their values or role models. The ‘thought’ category represents the value categories of the VFI and SLT. The third arrow, ‘proximity’ to ‘distance’ explains how some wish to volunteer to feel like they belong to a group and expand their social network, while others use it as a way to escape certain realities (NSRM model). The last arrow, ‘continuity’ to ‘newness’ stipulates how volunteers who reside with the latter category wish to continue volunteering because of familiarity with the subject matter (alludes to career category of VFI). Volunteers situated closer to the newness side wish to use volunteering as a means to learn and meet new challenges (resembles the VFI’s understanding category).
Figure 1
The Octagon Model
This interactive relation captured by the octagon model is an advantage that qualitative research has over quantitative; quantitative researchers try to categorise motives, but they ignore that these exist in interaction with each other (Hustinx et al., 2010). However compared to quantitative studies, few qualitative studies have been performed on volunteers’ motivations (Same et al., 2020). This research seeks to further develop and add to the existing literature by providing an integrated theory that explores the qualitative side of motivations; by delving further into motivations and looking beyond categories and boxes that quantitative research imposes on these motivations.
Methodology
Basic Set-up of Research Design
Participants were recruited using a mixture of convenience and snowballing sampling strategies. One of the researchers was a volunteer herself, and used her social media platform to recruit participants (convenience sampling). Based on those who agreed to partake in the study, participants then recruited further subjects they knew (snowball sampling), giving a total of ten participants. All respondents were Dutch nationals between the ages of 18-30 with experience in volunteering with disabled persons. Participants were volunteers at one of six organisations - SailWise, De Hinkelaar, OnlyFriends, Prins Willem Alexander Manege, and another which preferred to stay anonymous.
Description of coding approach
Coding – based on Gioia and colleagues’ (2012) methods – enables us to capture concepts relevant to the experience of youth volunteering; based on participants’ terms (1st order coding) and existing scientific literature on the topic of volunteering motivations (2nd order coding). Codes were extracted from relevant interview quotes and placed into a broad category (e.g. “reasons for volunteering - fun”). As we realised our codes were too specific, we saw fit to transition into axial coding to produce more meaningful codes and categories. We identified similarities between open codes and merged them, producing a reorganised dataset without redundant codes. Labelling interview transcripts this way enabled remaining faithful to participants’ terminology (1st order coding based on quotes: “it was fun”) whilst simultaneously allowing us to set a foundation for future exploration of (2nd order) theoretical-level themes (“reasons for volunteering”).As the interviews proceeded, we identified that participants presented other coding categories, such as volunteers’ experiences, learning developments they gathered from their experiences, and reasons for continuing to volunteer. Although these are unrelated to motivations, it is important to code, to remain true to qualitative research. Keeping our duty as researchers to fill a gap in research in mind, we chose to modify the initial research question to explore motivations for starting and continuing to volunteer. As such, the new research question became: “What motivates young Dutch adults to start and to continue volunteering within the disabled sector?”. Changing the research question allowed us to examine and further code for volunteers’ holistic experiences. This encouraged discovery of new, richer concepts rather than affirmation of already-existing ones.
When examining our role as researchers, we remained reflexive throughout the entirety of the project. We planned for any language barrier issues between the Dutch interviewees and two non-Dutch-speaking researchers by always having at least one Dutch researcher present during the interviews. Given the current pandemic, we also made it easier for participants to join interviews by ensuring an adequate technical set-up (internet stability, Zoom session scheduled, sent invite out to participants).
Moreover, observational memos were created immediately after each interview, to reflect upon its content whilst our memory was still fresh. For example, during the second interview, the interviewee commented on how they found out about volunteering, how it made them feel etc. After the interview, noted down observations in the moment and captured details that would have otherwise been brushed off.
This ‘note-taking’ approach fed into theoretical memos, as connections were made between the interviews’ content and the relevant theories. Throughout coding, 46 codes were produced. We observed that many codes related to: reasons to start volunteering, volunteer experiences and expectations, and any barriers or challenges. These initial insights give a sense of direction into where and why volunteers’ motivations may differ and where they may be similar.
Methodological memos were made after the first four interviews when we got together and shared insights and possible barriers. We concluded that although participants were answering questions we had prepared, they were not elaborating on them to the extent we had hoped, which made our interviews shorter than anticipated. Therefore, we came up with six more open-ended questions. Instead of explicitly asking what motivates them to volunteer, participants were given another chance to give a more genuine and personal answer. Additionally, the order in which questions were posed was modified; we became more flexible with the chronological choice of participant questions. Doing this halfway through the interviews helped fine-tune our research aim and improve our research process.
Results
This new research question led us to identify many themes and overarching concepts (Appendix 2). Codes were grouped based on similarities (e.g. ‘social skills’, ‘gaining self-knowledge and awareness’, and ‘differences between cultures’ were grouped). After grouping these codes, categories were further connected into groups (e.g. code group mentioned before was labelled with category ‘improvement of soft skills’). Ensued, groups of categories were linked into concepts (e.g. categories of ‘improvement of soft skills’ and ‘improvement of hard skills’ are represented by the concept of a ‘positive learning curve’). This process was applied to every code, which enabled production of the visual map below (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Visual Mapping: Decision-Making Processes Involved With Starting and Continuing to Volunteer
Factors Influencing Volunteering Motivations (a)
Two factors were found to affect volunteering motivations: personality traits and exposure to volunteering. During our interviews, participants identified personality traits they deemed vital for volunteers to have. Based on what participants described, connections to the ‘Big Five personality traits’ were made. These are five core bidirectional personality traits which have been derived from a comprehensive set of personality traits; they are said to underlie all of human personality (Engler, 2013). Three of these – ‘extraversion’, ‘openness’, and ‘conscientiousness’ – have been identified as central to an ‘ideal’ volunteer. Participants explained what personality traits they perceive to possess, and also how these traits helped them decide to take up volunteering. For instance, Interviewee 7 described the importance of patience, alluding to open and conscientious personality traits (Big Five Personality Traits): “You have to be really patient. Because when you handle someone, [...] who’s disabled, everything is in slow motion.”. Participants mentioned the importance of being talkative, community-oriented and eager to help as a volunteer. These pertain to the ‘extraversion’ dimension of the Big Five, which include someone’s sociability and warmheartedness. Being willing to help others also falls under the ‘agreeableness’ dimension, which encompasses traits like altruism and compliance. Furthermore, participants described traits of the ‘openness’ dimension, like being unbiased and eager to learn. These traits relate to how open-minded and how open to experience one is. Lastly, maturity and patience - relating to the ‘conscientiousness’ dimension - were described as vital for a good volunteer; ‘conscientiousness’ is related to diligence and dutifulness (Engler, 2013).
Prior exposure to volunteering was also found to encourage volunteering. For example, having friends and family do voluntary work encouraged participants to model their behaviour and, consequently, continue volunteering themselves: “I started [volunteering] because my mother was volunteering at the organisation SailWise.” (Interviewee 2).
Volunteering Motivations (b)
Above-mentioned factors consequently shape the following volunteering motivations: values relating to altruistic or humanitarian concerns, personal gains, career development, social influences, and uncertain motivations.The first volunteering motivation is related to participants who start volunteering because they consider themselves to have altruistic values or humanitarian concerns. These participants wanted to help people because it felt like the right thing to do, as Interviewee 5 explained: “I like the feeling of just helping without getting something in return.”. Interviewee 8 agreed by stating: “I want to do something for someone else, without having any expectation to get anything out of it.”. Moreover, for Interviewee 2, this was the main reason to take up volunteering: “I think the main reason [to start volunteering] is to help others.”.
The second motivation is wanting to maximise (non-career related) ‘personal gains’, such as by making yourself feel good and being able to merge your hobby with helping people: “My biggest motivation was to just spend time with my friends, and if at the same time you could do something good and help other people, that would be a nice bonus.” (Interviewee 9). This motivation category also includes those who use volunteering as a means to make themselves feel better when they are not in the right mind-set (Kassin et al., 2014). This is illustrated by Interviewee 9: “When you are not feeling like yourself, I experienced that I found it really nice that I was able to make other people happy [through volunteering].”.
Some participants were motivated to volunteer because they saw it as an opportunity to volunteer to enhance one’s career. As Interviewee 1 mentioned “it fits with my study [occupational therapy]. So, I could learn a lot about the kids and use that at school.”. Furthermore, Interviewee 6 explained how volunteering benefits their career: “The experience as a volunteer is also good for my CV to get other jobs.”.
Codes like having a disabled person in your social circle, being asked/pressured to volunteer, and meeting new people, exemplify how ‘social influences’ can also encourage some participants to take up voluntary work: “When I looked through all the other people that joined the [volunteering organisation], it was because of people around them in the family, or they knew other people that [...] had some health issues. They joined because of them. And it’s the same with my brother and me. My mom and dad got help from other people. And we were like, we can also help other people.” (Interviewee 3).
The last motivation which was found pertains to those participants who took up volunteering without any specific motivations. Although they did not specify why they started or continued to volunteer, it was still important for us to include this ‘uncertain’ dimension in our visual map. As Interviewee 4 described: “I didn’t care what to do. I didn’t care where to go, as long as it was far away from home”. One of our other participants was just searching for something to do during her gap year: “I was just searching the internet and I wanted to do something with sailing [...] and I found [the volunteer organisation’s] site. And I thought, ‘well, that’s great.’ So just try it.” (Interviewee 7).
Cost-Benefit Analysis (c)
These motivations mediate the participants’ analysis of what they expect to gain from volunteering and any barriers: “My biggest issue with volunteering is the lack of time, [...] I have to find babysitters for my children, which is not always easy.” (Interviewee 4). Interviewee 1 mentioned: “I felt I didn’t have the time [to take up volunteering]”. Any initial challenges that volunteers may have faced were considered ‘barriers’. These challenges ranged from lack of time to not having a job that supports volunteering. Another barrier to working alongside people with disabilities is that volunteers require training and must be certified to carry out their job. Furthermore, some participants thought they would be unable to perform the job: “I thought: ‘I am not capable of doing this’.” (Interviewee 9).
However, since all the participants in this study volunteer, they recognised that benefits outweigh the costs of volunteering and hence felt inclined to take-up volunteering (Hustinx et al., 2010). As interviewee 1 said: “you get so much more back than you put in.” Notably, participants with uncertain motivations could not have conducted a conscious cost-benefit analysis.
Consequences of Volunteering (d)
Lastly, there are several consequences to volunteering that would influence their decision to continue volunteering, such as participants experiencing positive learning developments. Some experienced an improvement in soft skills: “I was very shy in groups. And [volunteering] taught me to socially explore in groups and to stand for my own [and for] what I want instead of what people are expecting of me.” (Interviewee 2). Others saw improvement in hard skills; “practical skills, like getting someone in and out of bed with a certain machine and making a transfer from the wheelchair to the toilet.” (Interviewee 5). Furthermore, participants perceived the volunteering sector in a positive light: “It means so much to participants. And that makes me feel really, really good.” (Interviewee 5). Interviewee 4 answered the question why she continued to volunteer with: “I just really enjoy doing it.”.
Any of these consequences can reinforce and encourage volunteers to continue on their journey. Based on their actual experience (and no longer just what they expect to gain), they perfect their unconscious volunteering cost-benefit analysis and consequently repeatedly choose to continue. As one interviewee puts it: “because the kids have so much fun, that is more important than the difficulties we have” (Interviewee 1).
Notwithstanding, there are also volunteers who are uncertain of the benefits this activity brings them, as Interviewee 9 answered to the question of what the work means to them: “I’m not really sure”. Interviewee 3 also indicated that they do not apply the experience from volunteering to their private life: “No. That’s not how I am. It’s nice for a week and maybe the week after I’m still thinking about it, but then it’s back to the life which I’m living.”. Volunteers with uncertain motivations do not follow the same decision loop as those who identify other consequences to volunteering.
Improving Solutions for the Asian-Pacific ‘Sinking Islands’ Paradigm
Imaan Budhram
SBS320: A Global View on Migration
Word Count: 3012
SBS320: A Global View on Migration
Word Count: 3012
Abstract
The discourse pertaining to the ‘sinking island’ paradigm does not properly reflect the perspectives of all parties involved and has negative repercussions for an effective approach to the issue. In addition, legal considerations for an effective solution such as accurate terminology for affected parties can have ostracizing implications for these parties. Hence, this paper researched legal and sociological aspects of the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm to find required elements for a successful solution. It concluded that a successful solution understands cultural implications (e.g. people’s connection to their homeland) and incorporates elements that address the aspect of cultural identity when creating global solutions. One approach that this paper recommends is for states to continue formally recognizing the sovereignty of the Asian-Pacific Island states. This approach should be combined with relocation of Asian-Pacific Islanders to the territory of another sovereign state or to an artificially created island.
Nearby states such as Australia and New Zealand have also proposed solutions for the Pacific Islanders, but not all have been equally successful (Dempster & Ober, 2020; Warbrooke, 2014). As a proposed solution, in 2017 New Zealand issued an ‘experimental humanitarian visa’ category for displaced Asian-Pacific Islanders (Dempster & Ober, 2020). Every year 100 people would be able to enter New Zealand. However, the proposed solution was dropped within six months, because it was not well-received by the Pacific Islanders since they perceive migrating as a measure of last resort. Instead, the Islanders urged states to contribute more heavily to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and provide support in adaptation efforts. This example illustrates that the solutions proposed by other states neglect the attachment of the Asian-Pacific Islanders to their land and identity (Warbrooke, 2014). In this sense it can be argued that the way in which the ‘sinking island’ paradigm is narrated does not properly reflect the perspectives of all parties involved and has negative repercussions for an effective approach to the issue. For the sake of this paper the term ‘sinking island’ paradigm is defined as the cessation of the existence of a State without it being replaced by another entity (Sparks, 2018).
Relevant to note is that this issue includes legal considerations. For a country to be considered a state, it must have a defined territory1. Hence, one important question for legal scholars is whether the legal status of statehood will still apply to the Pacific Island states if they lose their territory to the ocean (Johnstone, 2019). Another issue relates to a term that has been used more frequently since the 1970s to describe victims of environmental crises, namely the term ‘climate refugee’ (Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012). This term is problematic within international law, because as became evident in the Teitiota Case2, it has no legal basis. However, the argument has also been made that the framing of this term has negative implications and the term has even been rejected by the people who it would supposedly apply to (Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012). For instance, Bettini et al. (2017) points to the fact that this term assumes the sole cause of the migration being climate change, creating ‘‘an environmentally deterministic understanding of human migration’’ (p. 352). In addition, she argues that this term focuses on the opportunity to move, even though the sole focus should lie on the prevention of displacement.
1 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (entered into force 26 December 1934) 165 LNTS 19, Art. 1. [Hereafter Montevideo Convention]. 2 AF (Kiribati) [2013] NZIPT 800413, New Zealand: Immigration and Protection Tribunal, 25 June 2013, para. 90 and 91.
Hence, this paper intends to research both the legal and sociological aspects of the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm and it will also underline which components are crucial for a solution to be effective. Thus, this paper aims to answer the following question: ‘What legal and sociological aspects need to be taken into consideration when suggesting solutions for the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm of the Asian-Pacific Islanders?
The Legal Challenges of the ‘Sinkings Islands’ Paradigm
As stated previously, one crucial legal challenge that concerns scholars is whether the nationality of Asian-Pacific Islanders will be retained even after their states have submerged into the ocean (Johnstone, 2019). To better understand this legal dilemma one must look at the Montevideo Convention which stipulates the criteria of statehood. Art. 1 of the Montevideo Convention states that for a nation to be considered a state it must fulfil four requirements, one of them being that a state must have a ‘‘a defined territory’’. 3 Equally relevant is the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons4 which states that a person would be considered stateless if their citizenship is no longer granted (due to the fact that his/her state has ceased to exist). Hence, the assumption would be that if Asian-Pacific States’ territory were to disappear, they would not be considered states anymore and would not have the associated rights and obligations under international law (Marek, 1968). This would mean that the Asian-Pacific States would not be able to maintain international contacts through the UN, seeing that UN membership is reserved for states only (Wong, 2013). Consequently, this would also result in Asian-Pacific Island states not having the right to stand before the International Court of Justice whose duty is to safeguard states in cases of violations of international law. In addition, it would mean that the nationalities of the Asian-Pacific Islanders would disappear. Concretely, for Asian-Pacific Islanders this could mean that it would become increasingly difficult to enter other states if their passports were to no longer be recognized.
3 Supra note 1.
4 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (adopted 28 September 1954, entered into force 6 June 1960) 360 U.N.T.S. 117 (1954 Convention), Art. 1.1.
However, the legal position that the disappearance of Asian-Pacific States’ territory will lead to loss of statehood and nationality for its citizens is disputed among international law scholars. Within international law there is a strong favour towards the principle of ‘presumption of continuity of state existence’ (Crawford, 2006). According to this principle even if states were to lose their territory, they would retain their legal statehood (Wong, 2013). The rationale behind this principle is that loss of statehood due to changes in territory can have grave repercussions. Relevant to note is that the international community plays a crucial role in the application of this principle (Stoutenberg, 2013). For Asian-Pacific Island states to retain their legal personality, other states must continue to recognize the Asian-Pacific Island states even after the island states’ territories have disappeared (Stoutenberg, 2013).
Another legal issue pertains to the term ‘climate refugee’. It should be noted that the Refugee Convention5 adopts a fairly narrow definition of the term ‘refugee’. For instance, there are two elements that are necessary for a person to be considered a ‘refugee’ under the Refugee Convention. Firstly, according to Art. 1(a) the individual in question must have fled from his state because of a ‘‘well-founded fear of being persecuted’’.6 Secondly, this Art. further states that the reason for persecution must be because of ‘‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’’.7 Neither element applies to the concept of ‘climate refugees’. Thus, it becomes clear that there are no legal provisions within the Refugee Convention providing protection for environmental refugees (Jaswal & Jolly, 2013). This means that Asian-Pacific Islanders would not be able to invoke rights granted under the refugee status such as the right to shelter8 or right to education9 if they were to seek refuge in another state (Höing & Razzaque, 2012).
5 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 189 U.N.T.S. 150; Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Jan. 31, 1967, 606 U.N.T.S. 267; 19 U.S.T. 6223 [hereinafter Refugee Convention].
6 Ibid, Art. 1(a).
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid, Art. 21.
9 Ibid, Art. 22.
This non-recognition of ‘environmental refugees’ is also perceived in case law. For example, in the Teitiota Case John Corcoran, a Kiribatian, who was residing in New Zealand requested protection under the Refugee Convention.10 The defendant argued that due to environmental pressures (e.g. over-population, sea-level rise) he could not return to Kiribati and requested permission to be granted the status ‘refugee’ so that he can continue residing in New Zealand.11 However, since neither of the aforementioned elements necessary for being considered a ‘refugee’ applied, the defendant’s claim was rejected by the Court.12 In this sense, the rigidness of legal systems fails to provide protection for Asian-Pacific Islanders who are forced to migrate due to climate change.
10 Supra note 2, para. 12 and para. 36.
11 Ibid, Art. 41.
12 Ibid, Art. 77.
In response to this, legal scholars have explored other possible options that could provide legal migration pathways for Asian-Pacific Islanders. For example, Byravan and Rajan (2015) suggested creating an international agreement that grants special migration status to nationals of those states who are experiencing strong climate-induced disasters. The protection of ‘environmental migrants’ would then be granted to nationals who were ‘‘living on small islands and along coasts in low-lying countries’’ and ‘‘whose habitats and means of livelihood have been destroyed by climate impacts’’ (Byravan & Rajan, 2006, p. 248). This convention would not only grant the right to relocate, but it would consequently draft an agreement in which the exact details are laid out on how associated rights would be exercised in practice, which institutions would coordinate the migration and how costs would be distributed (Byravan & Rajan, 2015). The states who significantly contribute to greenhouse gas emission would then be allocated more costs and resettlement so that the aspect of state responsibility would also be taken into consideration when establishing the convention (Byravan & Rajan, 2015). Alternatively, legal scholar McAnaney (2012) advocates for broadening the definition of the term ‘refugee’ used in the Refugee Convention. By defining ‘refugees’ as ‘‘persons who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their traditional homelands because of what are primarily environmental factors of unusual scope’’ displaced persons such as the Asian-Pacific Islanders can also be granted the ‘refugee’ status and receive the associated beneficial rights with that status (p. 1183) .
Legal Solutions for Kiribati
The aforementioned sections of the research paper have focused on analyzing legal issues that arise with the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm and proposing general solutions for Asian-Pacific Islanders. However, this section will focus on proposing solutions for a specific low-lying island state, namely Kiribati, to better visualize possible solutions Asian-Pacific Islands can take when dealing with the ‘sinking island’ paradigm. Kiribati is one of the island states that is very likely to be harmed by sea-level rise as its average height is circa 2 metres above sea level and is thus a relevant case study for this paper (Johnstone, 2019). Furthermore, it should be noted that the solutions that this section will propose will focus on relocating the Kiribatians in such a way that the sovereignty of Kiribati is maintained.
The first solution would be to relocate the Kiribatian to the territory of another sovereign state (e.g. Australia or New Zealand) (Johnstone, 2019). The idea would then be for the sovereign state to give a part of their territory to Kiribati and grant them jurisdictional powers over that territory. The government of Kiribati has considered the idea and has even purchased some land of Fiji in 2014 (Caramel, 2014). Acceptance of this approach can also be seen among other low-lying island states. For example, the Marshall Islands have decided to follow Kiribati's approach and purchased land as well within another state’s territorial borders (Johnstone, 2019). However, this approach also has a few drawbacks. Firstly, relocation to another state would heavily affect Kiribati’s fishing rights and access to the marine resources of their land territory. This can result in significant financial challenges considering that the economy of Kiribati heavily relies on the income generated by access to these marine resources. Secondly, it would be highly difficult to find states that would be willing to sacrifice control over part of their territorial jurisdiction voluntarily.
The second solution also involves the relocation of the Kiribatian people, but to an artificially created island (Johnstone, 2019). This is not an unrealistic solution as current technology is able to generate artificial islands that can sustain human life (Johnstone, 2019). Kiribati has decided to explore this solution as well and therefore consulted the United Arab Emirates, who are more familiar with such technology (Osborne, 2016). International maritime law would have to be adjusted slightly,13 but if concessions are made, it would be possible for Kiribati to continue being an independent state with access to its fishing rights and marine resources. Nevertheless, if states do not agree on granting Asian-Pacific Islanders sovereignty over such artificially created islands, this solution cannot be applied. In that sense, states have a legal responsibility as well to support this solution as it would allow for a continuation of recognition of rights of Asian-Pacific Island states.
13 According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea artificial islands are not allowed to qualify for statehood or have an exclusive economic zone. See United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1833 UNTS 397 (opened for signature 10 December 1982, entered into force 16 November 1994), Art 2.
Clash Between Western and Asian-Pacific Discourse
The ‘sinking islands’ paradigm can be described as both a material and discursive occurrence (Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012). For instance, when discussing global solutions for this paradigm the term ‘climate refugee’ is continuously repeated. This discourse involves a wide range of actors (e.g. climate change experts, journalists, research institutions, governments, non-governmental organizations) that make strong assertions in regards to the ‘victims’ of this paradigm (Bravo, 2009). One example of such a (Western) narrative is the idea that Asian-Pacific Islanders ‘‘are weak, passive victims with little internal resilience to fight for much more than relocation’’ and that they ‘‘thus ought to be given protection and options to legally resettle elsewhere’’ (McNamara & Gibson, 2009, p. 479). The aim of such narratives is to attract attention to the urgentness of this issue, but it simultaneously creates representational and material marginalization (Bravo, 2009). After all, this narrative perpetuates a discourse in which the inaction of Western states in regards to reduction of CO2 emission is omitted (McNamara & Gibson, 2009). This can have pernicious consequences for an emancipatory approach to this paradigm (Bettini, 2013). Hence, it’s important to realize that the framing of these narratives impact the representations of those termed ‘climate refugees’. In this sense, these narratives and climate change refugee discourse are performative, meaning that the ways in which one talks and writes about those termed ‘climate refugees’ subsequently influences the current and future meaning, understanding and legitimization of the term ‘climate refugees’ (Crate & Nuttall, 2009).
Nevertheless, one can notice that one aspect is strongly neglected in these dominant narratives, namely the experiences of those who are directly affected by the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm and their views on the idea of climate change mobility (Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012). For instance, McNamara and Gibson (2009) found that the narratives perpetuated in the media and the solutions visualized by U.N. Asian-Pacific ambassadors14 contrasted each other. While states such as Australia and the U.S. focused on the aspect of legal resettlement of Pacific Islanders elsewhere, the Asian-Pacific ambassadors were in favour of a strong, global approach to climate change mitigation efforts so that Asian-Pacific Islanders would not have to leave their own states (McNamara & Gibson, 2009). Attention should be drawn to two specific sentiments that were shared among all ambassadors. Firstly, the idea of other states to perceive migration as opposed to mitigation as a strategy to use for the ‘sinking islands’ paradigm signals a defeatist and irresponsible approach to the issue. The ambassadors did not consider migration an acceptable solution but were of the opinion that states which heavily contribute to carbon emission change must undertake action to severely limit the impacts of climate change (McNamara & Gibson, 2009). Secondly, the categorization of ‘climate refugees’ was not well-received since such categorization takes away the acknowledgement of sovereignty of the Asian-Pacific Islands and it harms the identity of the Asian-Pacific Islanders (McNamara & Gibson, 2009).
14 Interviews were held with ambassadors from the following states: Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu.
Since the Asian-Pacific Islands are each dealing with different stages of climate change (e.g. different levels of seawater intrusion, degrading coastal soil fertility, changing rainfall patterns, depleting coastal fisheries), Islands are also undertaking different climate change mitigation measures (McNamara & Gibson, 2009). For instance, the Solomon Islands are considered to be Asian-Pacific Islands that are the most susceptible to increasing sea levels (Van der Ploeg et al., 2020). As a result, one resilience measure taken by Islanders of these islands is internal migration in the form of relocation to higher ground or the main-island in Malaita. On the other hand, there are Asian-Pacific Islands that are more focusing on implementing resilience measures that strengthen, for instance, the protection of coastal communities in case national disasters (e.g. tropical cyclones) strike (Daly et al., 2010). One example of an island that is incorporating such an approach is Samoa. Aside from building sea walls, Samoa is focused on using natural resources such as offshore sand as a means to mitigate the impacts of, for example, a cyclone (Daly et al., 2010).
Border Militarisation and Its Effects on Irregular Migration
Thore Elberling
SBS320: A Global View on Migration
Word Count: 3597
SBS320: A Global View on Migration
Word Count: 3597
Abstract
21,470 irregular migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea between 2014 and 2020, and 7,261 irregular migrants have died while crossing the US-Mexico border between 1998 and 2017. Yet in Europe and the United States, irregular migration is framed as less of a humanitarian crisis endangering the lives of migrants and more as a security threat to the West, and consequently is met through the militarisation of borders. This paper utilises the literature on border militarisation and irregular migration on the southern borders of the US and EU to answer the research question: How does border militarisation affect irregular migration in the US and EU? The paper comes to the conclusion that the “prevention through deterrence” approach to irregular migration actively endangers migrants attempting the journey northward, while also failing to prevent irregular migration. Moreover, research conducted in the US shows that raising the migration costs through border militarisation decreases re-migration and therefore has effectively increased the population of irregular migrants in the US.
Therefore, this paper will analyse border militarisation in the United States and the European Union and will attempt to answer the following research question: How does border militarisation affect irregular migration in the US and EU?
What is Border Militarisation?
Serrano and Dunn used the term militarisation in 1998 to describe increased border policing, highlighting specifically the “use and normalisation of military rhetoric and ideology, as well as military tactics, strategy, technology, equipment and forces” (Serrano & Dunn, 1998, p. 3). Graham (2010) refines that definition by connecting normalisation of military paradigms with “efforts at the aggressive disciplining of bodies, places and identities deemed not to benefit […] nation, citizenship or body” (Graham, 2010, p. 60), and Kraska (2007) adds the assertion that militarism regards “use of force and threat of violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems” (Kraska, 2007, p. 503). This means that border militarisation does not only consist of the presence of military personnel and equipment at the border, or the use of military tactics but includes the militarised and pre-emptive rationales embedded throughout the policing and enforcement of borders (Wilson, 2014).
How Did Militarisation in the EU and US Come About?
The origins of border militarisation in the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (US) can be traced back to a shift in the discursive framing of migration and security beginning in the 1980s but heavily accelerated after the events of September 11th, 2001. In the post-war realism era of international relations theory from 1945 to the 1970s, security was perceived as an inter-state problem and nation-state relations were the topic of concern for both security studies and public discourse about security (Castles et al., 2014). Migration from the Global South, at that time, was mainly perceived as a means to address labour shortages in the Global North and wasn’t associated with some kind of security threat or threat to western culture (Castles et al., 2014). This changed at the end of the 1970s with the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the general rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East against western-backed dictators. Coinciding also with the decline of the Soviet Union as the main perceived antagonist to the western way of life, an increased degree of threat began to be associated with migrants, especially those originating from the middle east (Castles et al., 2014). This gradual change in the perception of migrants was accelerated greatly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the ensuing “war on terror”. Far from being a source of labour for the West’s industries, specifically the Islamic world and the global south, more generally, were now seen as the number one threat to western societies, and migrants coming from these countries were under general suspicion of terrorism (Castles et al., 2014; Pinyol-Jiménez, 2012).
The end of large-scale inter-state conflicts that came with the end of the Cold War also led to a reorientation of the concept of security: away from the defence of nation-states towards the concept of human security. This approach to security integrates a rather inclusive and holistic conception of the protection of individuals into the traditional political-military conception of security. This “new” concept of security, as defined by the UN, includes economics, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security (UNDP, 1994). Migration, which wasn’t considered a major security threat under the older conception, now “endangers” societies in a multitude of ways (Weiner, 1992). Ceyhan and Tsoukala (2002) distinguish four axes that tend to be included when migration is considered in security terms. A socioeconomic axis, concerning rising unemployment, welfare state crisis and urban environmental deterioration; a securitarian axis, concerning the “loss of control” narrative that associates sovereignty, borders and both internal and external security; an identitarian axis, where migrants are associated with a threat to a host countries national identity; and a political axis, as migration often fuels anti-immigrant, racist and xenophobic discourses (Ceyhan & Tsoukala, 2002, p. 24). This all culminates in the concept of the migration-security nexus, which signifies the close connectedness between migration and security in present public discourse (Estevens, 2018). This redefinition of security also changed the perception of borders. From largely defensive lines in inter-state military tensions to sites of policing and control of flows of goods and people, and more recently to sites of militarised surveillance (Jones & Johnson, 2016).
This shift in the perception of migration-security, which happened roughly simultaneously in the US and EU, was both driven and exploited by various actors for personal economic or political gain, and consequently led to the militarisation of the US and EU southern borders (Akkerman, 2017; Massey et al., 2016). In the US, politicians, bureaucrats, pundits and the security and weapons industry form what Miller (2019) calls a border-industrial-complex, that drives both public debate and policy on issues relating to migration and border security. This led to a >6,000% budget increase for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since 1980. Strikingly CPB’s commissioner once proclaimed a “silent invasion” of America by “illegal aliens”, despite the facte that the actual inflow of undocumented migrants remained stable after the late 1970s and since 2010 is decreasing (Massey, 2020; Massey et al., 2016; Miller, 2019). Yet politicians were able to spin the increase in apprehensions at the border, caused by the higher number of agents present, as a continuously accelerating “border crisis” and used it to increase funding for border enforcement (Massey et al., 2016). The biggest private profiteers of increased spending on border enforcement were the same arms manufacturers that saw their market decline with the end of the Cold War, who are incidentally also the biggest donors for politicians responsible for allocating security funding (Miller, 2019; Wilson, 2014). In the EU, due to its decentralised nature, lobbying efforts by the security industry are more obscure, yet industry interests are strikingly well represented in advisory committees for the allocation of research and development (R&D) funds, like “the Group of Personalities”. This led to more than 350 million euro, or 23% of total R&D subsidies, being spent on security research in the EU between 2002 and 2016 (Akkerman, 2018). Next to that, the budget for FRONTEX, the EU’s border and coast guard agency, has nearly tripled since 2010 to over 300 million annually, while at the same time a lack of oversight and problematic track-record concerning migrants’ human rights have resulted in plenty of critique from the UNHCR and NGOs like Seawatch and the European Council for refugees and exiles (Akkerman, 2016; European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2020; EU Parliament, 2019; Tammikko, 2019).
Some authors also regard the border militarisation efforts by the West as a symptom of what Gramsci (2021) calls a “crisis of hegemony” of the neoliberal capitalist state in a post-Cold War, globalised world. Pinyol-Jiménez (2012) argues that after the demise of the communist adversary, the West was left without an adversary to identify against and in whose opposition, security could be assessed. After 9/11 this role of the antagonist was taken up by the “Third World terrorist”, whose threat served to unite western societies. This signification also involved laying an adverse linkage between international migration and international terrorism, both involving racialised others, that ultimately led to border militarisation as a defence against the black/brown “migrant-terrorist” (Pinyol-Jiménez, 2012). Moreover, Brown (2017) and Jones and Jonson (2016) maintain that the increased focus on borders are the reactions of nation-states to their declining status in a globalised world and that fortification of borders serves as a “re-articulation of sovereign power” (Jones & Johnson, 2016, p. 188).
Border Militarisation Strategies in the US and EU
As mentioned above, border militarisation is manifested in both the application of military hardware and militarized tactics and ways of thinking. Concerning hardware, the link between the military and CBP in the US is readily apparent. Using “program 1033”, excess equipment worth some $5 billion has been transferred from army stockpiles to civilian law enforcement agencies, including CBP and ICE. This equipment includes body armour, assault rifles and armoured vehicles, now used to police the border. Next to that, CBP specifically recruits veterans into its force, even sending recruiters overseas to recruit soldiers from the battlefield (Jones & Johnson, 2016; Musgrave et al., 2014).
Just like the US, the EU is also using military hardware, like drones, to surveil its external border. Yet, except for FRONTEX’s Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABITs), military weapons aren’t common among European border guards, while variety exists across the member states’ agencies. Militarisation of borders in the EU is more pronounced in the application of military rationality when enforcing the borders. Three militarised principles employed in border enforcement stand out in both the US and EU: the control of the “enemy’s” mobility, preemptive logic of preventing future problems and techno-solutionism. Techno-solutionism and preemptive logic manifest themselves in what CBP calls “smart fencing”, the deployment of sensors in remote parts of the border, or in Eurosour (European Border Surveillance System), an information exchange platform that aims at integrating the border surveillance all over the EU to create real-time “situational awareness”, a term also borrowed from military jargon (Jones & Johnson, 2016).
Preemptive military logic also leads both the US and EU to attempt to externalise their border enforcement towards neighbouring countries, Mexico for the US and the North Africa and Turkey in the EU’s case (Jones and Johnson, 2016; Slack et al., 2016). These policies reward countries through which migrants pass to their final destination in the EU or US if they forcefully prevent irregular migrants from continuing their journey. In doing this, the EU doesn’t refrain from partnering with militias in Libya, that next to being the country’s “coast guard”, are also involved in torturing and enslaving migrants in Libya as well as smuggling of goods towards the EU (Pradella & Cillo, 2020).
Lastly, both the EU and US attempt to control irregular migrants’ mobility by various means. One manifestation of this is the mortification of previously well-frequented crossing sides, like the border fence between Tijuana and San Diego or around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, more or less deliberately drive migrants into more hostile terrain in order to “deter” their crossing (Pinyol-Jiménez, 2012; Slack et al., 2016). Another practice of controlling mobility is the kidnapping and forced relocation of migrants. Tazzioli and de Genoba (2020) use the term kidnapping to describe the “family separation” policy employed by the Trump administration in 2018, as well as the “closed ports” policy used by the EU to trap shipwrecked migrants and their civilian saviours at sea. Kidnapping in this context is used to regain control over the migrants' mobility for multiple reasons: as a punitive tactic for “deterrence”, as physical constriction and forced relocation of migrants bodies and lives or for intra-state political as well as inter-state diplomatic leverage (Tazzioli & De Genova, 2020).
We Are Doing Something Good, Right?
The Implications of Boycotting Fashion Brands for Garment Workers in Developing Countries
The Implications of Boycotting Fashion Brands for Garment Workers in Developing Countries
Katharina Wilde
Word Count: 4357
Word Count: 4357
Abstract
The fashion industry has faced a change in consumer dynamics, prompting the rapid growth of the fast-fashion industry. To maintain low prices, fast-fashion relies on outsourcing its production to less developed countries at a high ethical price for the workers. In response, many consumers worldwide have started to demand for improved working conditions for the garment workers, often by calling for boycotts of fast-fashion retailers. Much attention has been paid to how consumer dynamics and boycotts interact, yet little has been said about the effects of boycotts on the workers in developing countries. Hence, this essay explores this issue by analysing the implications of a boycott scenario in Bangladesh, a prime example of a developing country that is heavily reliant on the fast-fashion sector. This paper argues that a boycott is not a feasible method due to its adverse effects. Instead, supporting on-site NGOs and similar campaigns may be a better option to achieve improved working conditions.
To sustain the low-cost production/high-profit strategy, fast-fashion retailers have increasingly outsourced their production, usually to less developed countries, due to the abundance of cheap labour (Ross, 2004). Unsurprisingly, this comes at a high ethical price. Frequently, the production factories are unsafe environments fuelled by abuse of the workers and hazardous working conditions of a general exploitative nature (Ross, 2004). Over the past two decades, scandals, such as GAP’s child labour case (see Teather, 2004), or incidents such as the fire of a garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan, which caused the deaths of over 300 workers (see ur-Rehman et al., 2012) have increasingly gained consumers’ attention and prompted a global demand for change (Gordon & Gordon, 2005). One recurring method to accomplish such change is to boycott fast-fashion retailers (Joy et al., 2012) in an attempt to punish unacceptable behaviour of the target and pressure for change (Braunsberger & Buckler, 2011). In the case of fast-fashion, the common motivation is to voice displeasure and force a company, amongst other things, to change its exploitative production practices (Hiquet et al., 2018). Regarding the notion of boycotts, the academic debate seems to primarily focus on explaining boycott behaviour of the actors (usually the consumers) (see, for instance, Hiquet et al., 2018; Klein et al., 2004; Shaw & Tomolillo, 2004) instead of the effects boycotts may have on the target, in this case, a company or its workers in less developed countries. Hence, this essay will question the effect of boycotts by shining a light on its potential impact on the developing countries which are home to the factories and workers catering to fast-fashion retailers.
This paper will assess the implications of a boycott scenario for the factory workers and developing countries in general. In order to do so, this essay will focus on a specific case, namely Bangladesh, as the country is a prime example of many developing countries whose industry heavily relies on the fast-fashion sector and garment production. Drawing upon this analysis, a claim may be made about the effect of fast-fashion boycotts and what other potential remedies could be sought out.
A Theoretical Analysis of Bangladesh’s Readymade Garment Industry
Bangladesh has long been considered one of the least developed countries in the world, as measured by gross national income (GNI) per capita. According to the latest available data, Bangladesh has a GNI per capita of $2,010 (The World Bank, 2021a). As such, it is a part of the “lower-middle income economies” that include all countries with a GNI per capita between $1,046 to $4,095 (The World Bank, 2021b). In the latest available global comparison, Bangladesh ranks 151 out of 194 in terms of its development (The World Bank, 2019). Notwithstandingly, Bangladesh is one of the developing countries that have managed to improve their economic stance over the years, as the country is recommended to graduate this year from the official “list of least developed countries” (United Nations Economic and Social Council, 2021) – in this case, primarily by catering to the fast-fashion phenomenon through the expansion into the so-called readymade garment industry, hereafter referred to as RMG industry (United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, 2020).
Analytical Ambiguities
Before turning towards the analysis, it is necessary to address the two main obstacles that aggravate a precise analysis. First, while often used interchangeably, the Bangladeshi government differentiates between the textile and RMG industry (see the official Bangladesh Statistics report published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 2019). Thus, for a clear-cut analysis, it is crucial to continue this separation to avoid further confusion. The principal disparity is that the RMG industry solely entails the mass-production and distribution of complete pieces of clothing (garments) (TIS, n.d.). In contrast, the textile industry refers to the production and distribution of pure fabrics (TIS, n.d.). For this paper, the industrial sector of relevance will be RMG, as it supplies to fast-fashion brands.
Secondly, it must be cautioned that numbers and statistics can potentially vary between sources. Reasons for this can be manifold and can include, amongst other factors, a low literacy rate or lack of awareness and education as well as insufficient institutional resources (Elahi, 2008). Additionally, statistical variation may also stem from the definitional confusion described above. Anyhow, this is a separate topic in itself and shall not be part of this analysis. Nevertheless, in order to maintain the validity of the claims made in this essay, it is necessary to bear this consideration in mind when researching official statistics related to Bangladesh’s industry. Yet, this fact shall not take away from the prime argument of this paper as the general findings remain largely verified.
The RMG Industry – Economic Impact
With its independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh’s economy had to be rebuilt as a new independent entity. In the late 1970s, the newly-formed country only counted a negligible nine RMG factories spread over the country, concentrating on the domestic market with little to no exports (Asif, 2017). Over the years, the industry has seen an immense growth as the number of officially registered factories has risen to over 4500 (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association [BGMEA], 2020). With these factories, the RMG sector is the largest industry in Bangladesh, accounting for 83% of its total export earnings (BGMEA, 2020) and 12.36% of the country’s total GDP in the fiscal year of 2016-2017 (Chowdhury et al., 2019). As published in the official statements by the BGMEA (2020), Bangladesh’s RMG exports “more than doubled, from $14.6 billion in 2011 to $33.1 billion in 2019”, with an annual growth rate of 7% (Berg et al., 2021, “From Tragedy to Transformation” section). In sum, this showcases the sector’s strong potential and overall significance for the country’s economy.
Furthermore, following Muhammad’s (2011) caculations, the RMG sector alone has created employment for over 3.5 million Bangladeshis, of which more than 80% are women with minimal to no education. Bangladesh’s RMG industry has always had the lowest wages and labour cost compared to all other RMG producing countries, which caused the attraction of the large share of foreign interest. Following several strikes and protests in 2018, the legal minimum wage of garment workers was increased to Tk 8000 (US$ 94.33) per month as reported by Human Rights Watch (2019), which equals more or less US$ 3.1 a day. For reference, the average monthly income of a working person in Bangladesh is, according to the World Bank (2019), estimated to be around Tk 13,120.14 or US$ 154.65. Considering this notable monetary gap, it could be argued that while the RMG industry created millions of jobs, these were below-average income jobs, showcasing the prevalence of cheap labour in the RMG sector.
As with any industry, the different sectors in one way or another intertwine and intersect. Focusing on the RMG sector, its growth also positively impacted other sectors through generating profits and increasing general employment throughout Bangladesh (Bhattacharya et al., 2002). Following the authors’ report, amongst the sectors that have been impacted the strongest are the financial and insurance sectors, whose robust growth is usually attributed to the RMG sector. Comparable effects apply to various other sectors, including the engineering sector, real estate and its development, the ICT sector, utility services, waste recycling and tourism. Furthermore, the intense growth prompted an extension of Bangladesh’s port facilities, which was necessary to serve the industry’s international significance, as 40% of the port’s total earnings can be attributed to the RMG sector. Similar effects were observed with increased inland transport services. By occupying such a significant position within Bangladesh’s economy, it may not be surprising that the RMG sector is also responsible for millions of US Dollars that have flowed into the Government Exchequer and into the hands of professional services, such as business consultants or legal agencies, further fuelling the country’s business sector (Bhattacharya et al., 2002).
All in all, the potential and significance of the RMG sector is not solely but certainly to a high degree responsible for the economic development of Bangladesh.
The RMG Industry – Societal Impact
Similar to the economic impacts, the growth of the RMG sector has also had tremendous social impacts in Bangladesh. Although many are to be positively interpreted, some issues have also arisen around the RMG sector. However, it may be debatable whether these issues are attributable to the RMG sector itself or rather to the official handling of the sector by governments and foreign retailers.
On the positive side, first and foremost, the RMG sector granted employment to millions of workers, giving them a chance to improve their social conditions and security. To be precise, having a stable income allows workers to have savings (Loayza et al., 2000), which are beneficial to the individuals and their families as they provide small-scale financial security, reducing not only economic but also societal vulnerability (Altmann, 2003).
Furthermore, as the employees in the RMG factories are predominantly women, the industry has generated access to a monetary income for many uneducated or lesser-educated women. Numerous studies, as assessed by Zohir (2001), have concluded that having a source of income is recognised as a means to gain more independence from the family, thus reducing female vulnerability. At the same time, according to Bhattacharya et al. (2002), increasing female labour that is not confined to household-related tasks draws attention to the needs and specificities of working women. Based on the aforementioned factors, one could argue that the industry is a tool of empowerment by providing employment to millions of Bangladeshi women. Despite that, the dominance of women can also be criticised as it (1) may perpetuate gender stereotypes in terms of work tasks and (2) leaves an abundance of women with a considerably lower-than-average income.
Another positive effect of the massive employment of women is the observation that working women are more aware of family planning due to newfound sources of financial security (Bhattacharya et al., 2002), which reduces the perceived need for a large family or early marriage as a source of financial insurance (Fischer, 2010). Lower fertility rates are by no means the solution to improve Bangladesh’s state of development. However, higher fertility rates do affect the pace of economic growth in developing countries due to the scantiness of many vital resources, such as water access or employment opportunities (Livi-Bacci, 2017).
Following the earlier mentioned public concern about the exploitative working conditions, the Bangladeshi government pledged on various occasions to improve these conditions by implementing policies and regulations in favour of the garment workers. Indeed, officially, Bangladesh has a broad legal framework set up to ensure the workers’ rights (Islam & Rakib, 2019). One policy the country particularly prides itself on is one of many child labour elimination programmes by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Implemented in 1995, the programme aimed to gradually reduce child labour in the Bangladeshi garment factories by giving decruited former child workers monthly stipends and placements in local schools (Rahman et al., 2018). However, policies and laws of such nature are to be viewed critically, as, despite their existence and implementation, they do not automatically eliminate such issues. We see recurring incidents of violations of workers’ rights, specifically in the garment industry. One such incident occurred in 2019 after workers protested and demanded higher wages. Human Rights Watch (2019) reported that after the strikes, thousands of workers were dismissed without further notice and blacklisted at other factories. Dozens of people were arrested, and protestors were shot at (officially only with rubber bullets) by the police, which caused the death of one of the workers. Other personal accounts of ongoing exploitative conditions can, for instance, be found in an interview-based study by Akhter, Rutherford, and Chu (2019). In regards to the programme to reduce child labour, while it was introduced in 1995, an investigation by the Overseas Development Institute found that child workers as young as eleven years old are still a common occurrence and make up roughly 15% of the workforce in the RMG sector (Quattri & Watkins, 2019, p. 51). This shows again that we need to be aware that “official” numbers or statements may not be taken for granted without critical consideration, as reality may showcase a different picture.
In terms of the overall societal impact, it can be concluded that while the employment of workers by the RMG sector did have a considerably positive impact, especially on women, any official improvement has to be critically assessed. There are still wide-ranging issues within the industry, especially concerning workers’ rights and general working conditions. However, it is arguable whether these are issues caused by the RMG industry itself or those deciding over the industry.
A Practical Case in Bangladesh: The Boycott Scenario
Having assessed the RMG industry and its strong economic as well as societal significance in Bangladesh, the following will delve into a possible boycott scenario and its implications.
The success, or in other words, the achievement of change for the factory workers, of any type of boycott is, amongst other factors, primarily dependent on the commitment of a large enough group of persons (Delacote, 2009). Granted, one individual deciding to refuse to buy from one fast-fashion retailer will likely not drive the latter into bankruptcy. However, boycotts are not impossible and can, by all means, achieve at least some sort of outcome. One successful example was the shutdown of Ivanka Trump’s fashion line in 2018 after facing a broad boycott movement for over two years. As the customers refused to buy the clothes, big retailers decided to drop the brand, leaving Ivanka Trump no choice but to close her label (Hanbury, 2018). While seemingly successful, there are two main points to consider in this case. First, the boycott did not lead to any improvements for the garment workers in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Instead, it led to Ivanka Trump simply closing her label and, herewith, reducing or even stopping the garment production. One could speculate that this, in turn, placed a potential risk on the garment workers' employment. Second, similar to many other successful boycotts, this one did not target large fast-fashion retailers. The fact that this successful boycott neither led to improved working conditions for the garment workers nor targeted a fast-fashion giant, but instead potentially risked the workers’ jobs, raises the question of whether a boycott could even have the potential to make a difference in terms of economic and societal issues related to the fast-fashion realm. After all, fast fashion’s primary strength is its immense size and importance in the global economy, as ranked by the McKinsey Global Fashion Index (2019).
In any case, the calls for boycotts of retailers such as Zara or H&M are not declining. Thus, taking a step further from Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and assuming a boycott against a fast-fashion giant was successful, what would happen to a country like Bangladesh?
First and foremost, if a large enough group of people stopped buying from a retailer, the overall demand for their garments would decline. A possible reaction to such dynamics could be observed during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. Due to closed shops, declined consumer confidence and other factors, the demand, especially for fast-fashion, declined rapidly, which led to retailers cancelling their orders (Batha & Karim, 2020). Due to a lack of work and payment, many garment factories had to close, and thousands of workers went unpaid or at least underpaid (Batha & Karim, 2020). In Bangladesh alone, it was estimated that around US$ 500 million in wages were lost or withheld (Batha & Karim, 2020). As observed, facing a decline of the largest sector of the industry scarred Bangladesh’s entire economy, which was fuelled by the industry’s interconnectedness (Amit, 2020). This is especially detrimental given the country’s position as one of the least developed in the world, which depends even more than other countries on ongoing economic growth. For the concerned workers, the situation is equally harmful, given that the majority either lost their job entirely due to factory closings or continued working underpaid or even unpaid. One preeminent benefit of the mass employment of the RMG sector was that it guaranteed a usually steady flow of income which helped many, specifically women, gain more (financial) independence. Losing the only source of income revises this trend, which drives workers back or even deeper into poverty.
Certainly, boycotting one retailer may not result in the same crisis that Bangladesh’s economy is facing now. Notwithstandingly, the current effects of Covid-19 clearly illustrate that a subsiding decline of demand by customers of big fast-fashion retailers can – if large enough – have adverse effects on the workers in terms of loss of employment and the resulting lack of financial security, and on the economy at large due to (1) a decrease in purchasing power of the millions of factory workers and (2) the decrease of the RMG industry and the other connected sectors. Both lead to a decrease or at least a recession of economic growth. It is predominantly harmful to boycott a source of income many depend on, especially if those depending on it are already facing more severe circumstances due to their country’s state of development. Activist and former child worker in Bangladesh’s garment factories Kalpoona Akter (2013) summarised in her words: “a boycott is suicide for my country.”
Potential Alternatives for Boycott
Proponents of boycotting fast-fashion retailers see this strategy as a way to achieve safer working conditions and higher wages for the factory workers in the RMG industry. However, given that boycotts of fast-fashion retailers are primarily harmful for the workers, what might be some other solutions?
Research by Pines and Meyer (2005) found that the most effective way to achieve change is having governments take action, for example, by enforcing regulations through new legislation. Applied to this case, if governments created laws to protect the workers and their rights with strict regulations, companies would be legally bound to adapt, which would significantly improve the situation. However, as mentioned before in the case of Bangladesh, the country does have a legal framework set up to guarantee workers’ rights. Yet again, that does not mean that in reality, these laws are implemented and monitored everywhere. Turning towards governments alone to change the circumstances may not be most effective in developing countries for two reasons. First of all, Bangladesh, as well as many other developing countries, are highly dependent on the RMG sector and its foreign customers. If the government suddenly turned over the entire sector by forcing brands to improve the labour situation, labour cost would simultaneously increase, making the production in that country unattractive to fast-fashion retailers, who would then try to find alternative production locations. This would, in turn, negatively affect the country’s economic growth. Thus, one could question whether governments would even be willing to take such action. Secondly, close monitoring of the adherence to regulations initiated by the government is not always possible or can be subject to manipulation, as private monitoring of state-initiatives has turned into an entire competitive business in itself (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights [ECCHR], 2016). Hence even if the government would formally impose changes, it is risky to believe that those changes will also be effectively implemented.
Considering this, the most effective way to achieve change for the garment workers seems to be holding each company responsible. One often successful way to do so is by supporting specialised workers’ rights organisations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign.
The Clean Clothes Campaign is an alliance of NGOs and labour unions which organises international campaigns pressuring retailers and manufacturers to take responsibility and improve their conditions in favour of the garment workers. This is done by offering guidance throughout this process, providing all actors choices and possible ways to change (Clean Clothes Campaign, n.d.). Past successes include the realisation of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh. The legally binding agreement established the building of safer factories and working conditions through “strengthen[ing] occupational safety and health, labour inspection services, skills training and rehabilitation services in the long term” (ILO, 2017, “The Bridging Solution” section). Furthermore, the Clean Clothes Campaign ensured the accountability of involved retailers and achieved compensation for the workers and their families (Clean Clothes Campaign, n.d.; Lucchetti, 2015; Rahman & Yadlapalli, 2021).
The Clean Clothes Campaign is only one example of many NGOs that are on-site and actively involved. There are numerous factors at play that define the work of these organisations, and certainly, NGOs may also be prone to negative influences that affect their work. However, based on past successes like those of the Clean Clothes Campaign, NGOs prove to possess several characteristics that may be advantageous. First and foremost, it was mentioned before that governments often lack willingness and effort to take action. NGOs, on the other hand, are independent of governments and therefore do not rely on the governments’ willingness to act but instead can act more efficiently (Brinkerhoff et al., 2007). On the same note, they often have an incentive for result-oriented work and maintain a strong relationship with the people they work with, to maintain their own legitimacy (Wit & Berner, 2009). Further and perhaps unsurprisingly, the abundance of NGOs that have been founded over the years have led to a certain level of competition over funding, which one could argue also acts as a control mechanism as poor behaviour can easily be exposed by competitors (Aldashev & Verdier, 2009). Lastly, especially NGOs that are on-site may have an advantage over governments, as they are actually involved with the people they work with and can communicate with them (Brinkerhoff et al., 2007). Only through close consultations and communication can effective programs evolve and actions be taken (Brinkerhoff et al., 2007). There are undoubtedly other advantages and disadvantages to the work of NGOs, but it can perhaps be argued that their work is crucial and has led to much improvement over the past. They are an important addition to governments and may even prove to be a more reliable actor as they utilise the combined efforts of multiple actors dedicating their work to the industry, ideally acting as an ally to achieve change without risking garment workers to be held responsible and consequently suffer.
No Olive Branch: (De)Colonising Food Systems in Occupied Palestine
Fé Versteeg
HUM309: Postcolonial Theory
Word Count: 3298
HUM309: Postcolonial Theory
Word Count: 3298
Abstract
This paper analyses the attacks on Palestinian food systems within the framework of (post)colonial discourse, to evidence the claim that the Zionist project is at its core a settler colonial project–a claim which has become prevalent in both academic and popular discourse. It contends that as settler colonialism involves the “elimination of the native”, destroying the means for subsistence necessarily becomes a means towards completing a colonial project. Indeed, Palestinian food systems have been widely targeted by historical and contemporary agents of the Zionist project. Further, it argues that food production is in settler colonialism not only weaponized because of its material significance to indigenous communities, but also for its symbolic significance: the transformation of food landscapes allows colonisers to reset the “national clock” and forge indigeneity on colonised lands. In the case of Palestine, this manifests itself in the uprooting of olive trees and the plantation of pine trees by the Israeli government, independent Zionist settlers and the Jewish National Fund, which has transformed Palestinian land into a European-looking landscape. Finally, using Cabral’s definition of culture, the paper argues food production can also be a site of anticolonial resistance, which is reflected in both the continued plantation of olive trees and the reestablishment of “food sovereignty” in occupied Palestinian territories.
Whilst Fanon’s emphasis here lies on the dignity that land yields, one must not negate his mention of “bread” as another important yield of the land. In fact, in The Wretched of The Earth, Fanon defines the yield of food as a crucial link between land and the life, as food allows life to persist on the land that supplies it (Clare, 2013, p. 69). As settler colonial projects seek to establish new life on land, and as Fanon identifies food as a crucial connection between life and land, it inspires the questions: what role exactly does the material and cultural value of food play in colonialism, and by extension, what role does food continue to play in the Palestine-Israel situation?
I argue that the Zionist project’s status as a settler colonial project can be evidenced by its actions in the domain of food production: rather than being the product of “conflict” in the region, I argue that the project’s historical and continued destruction of indigenous food systems is an active means towards the “elimination of the native” that Wolfe (2006) finds is essential to settler colonial projects. Additionally, the transformation of food environments in the region by agents of the Zionist project, including the Israeli government and independent Zionist settlers, also parallels a transformation by European settlers in North America. This transformation operates not only to erase indigenous Palestinians populations, but also to transform the land and symbolically “reset the clock” on this land, a phenomenon which can be illustrated through the uprooting of olive trees and the planting of pine trees in the region. Following an application of Cabral’s congruently “agronomic” definition of culture and its potential for anticolonial resistance to food production, I then briefly discuss the decolonizing potential in “food sovereignty”. This decolonization is already underway in Palestine, in the form of grassroots food sovereignty projects, including the Union of Agricultural Workers Committee (UAWC).
A Brief History of Palestine and Israel
In the early 20th century, indigenous Palestinians began to witness an increasing settlement of Zionist Jewish groups to their lands. These groups stemmed from an organized Zionist movement created in Jewish communities in Europe, who sought to transform Palestinian land into a Jewish homeland (Manna’, 2013, p. 89). Whilst simultaneously involved in a struggle against Zionist newcomers and mandated British rule, Palestinians believed they could eventually claim ownership of the land they inhabited (Manna’, 2013, p. 90). However, the British remained, whilst international support for the Zionist project grew after the horrors of the Holocaust (Manna’, 2013, p. 90). This support materialized in the form of the United Nations partition plan of 1947, which would end British rule but divide Palestine into Palestinian territory and a Jewish state, the latter now known as Israel (Manna’, 2013, p. 90).
In essence, the Zionist project sought “a land without a people for a people without a land” (Abu Awwad, p. 541). Commonly used in the early Zionist movement, this phrase also encapsulates the problematics of their project: the land that the Zionists claimed was in fact not without people, thus the establishment of Israel meant a violent uprooting of the Palestinian people that inhabited the land it claimed (Abu Awwad, p. 541). The elaborate means toward this “uprooting” have been extensively documented, both in early Palestinian recordings and a large body of contemporary research (Salamanca et al., 2012, p. 1). These documentations include that of Al-Nakba, commemorated yearly by Palestinians. Translating to “the catastrophe”, Al-Nakba tends to refer to the period of destruction and erasure that shortly followed Israel’s establishment in 1948, during which four to six hundred Palestinian villages were demolished and roughly half of Palestine’s indigenous population was forced to flee their land (Bardi, 2016, p. 169). However, whilst Al-Nakba is often framed as a distinct event, a “precondition for the creation of Israel or the outcome of early Zionist ambition”, it continues to manifest itself in the subjugation of the Palestinian people today (Salamanca et al., 2012, p. 2). This subjugation is especially acute in the Palestinian territories which Israel has occupied since 1967, including the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and thus lying beyond the internationally agreed to “Green Line” or border of Israel (Manna’, 2013, p. 87).
The Zionist Project as “Settler Colonialism”
The Zionist project, which established Israel and which motivates the continued illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli state and independent settlers, has often been defined as an example of “settler colonialism” (Salamanca et al., 2012, p. 1). In its most basic definition, settler colonialism involves the establishment of colonies for the purpose of permanent settlement on a territory (Young, 2001, p. 17). Certainly, the Zionist project involved such a settlement in pursuit of a Jewish state and society. However, such a definition of settler colonialism glosses over the populations native to this territory, who Wolfe (2006) argues must necessarily be eliminated to allow access to territory and make way for new populations in settler colonialism (p. 387). Wolfe’s (2006) notion of settler colonialism as a project that essentially involves “the elimination of the native” applies to both the theory and praxis of the Zionist project (p. 387). In the domain of theory, Zionism’s founding father Theodor Herzl wrote in his allegorical manifesto “If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388). This observation was painfully put into practice in the decades that followed: from the events of Al-Nakba to the Deir-Yassin massacre, Palestinians throughout the twentieth century faced what Pappé (2006) argues can only be described as an “ethnic cleansing” of the land rather than a war (p. iii).
As is the case in other settler colonial projects, the struggle to control the largest amount of land has been and continues to be at the heart of Zionism today (Salamanca et al., 2012, p. 1). This struggle shape contemporary Israeli state policies against Palestinian populations inside Israel and in the occupied territories, which are comprised of an array of “military, legal and economic tactics” to remove as many Palestinians as possible from the land they inhabit (Salamanca et al., 2012, p. 1). Additionally, the tactics of erasure of indigenous people necessary to “cleanse” the land for settler colonialism do not only involve physical removal, but further include the erasure of cultural aspects of indigenous life. Wolfe (2006) names the replacement of place-names as an example of cultural erasure as it operates in settler colonialism, a phenomenon also reflected in the Hebraization of Palestinian place-names since the early twentieth century (p. 388). This physical and cultural notion of erasure has also been used by Salaita (2016) in his book Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine to compare the present situation of Palestinians to the indigenous people of Native America–subjected in the context of a more widely agreed upon example of settler colonialism– with the purpose of drawing attention to the global nature of (neo)colonial political, cultural and economic practices and to call for international solidarity.
The Destruction of Food Systems as a Means for (Palestinian) Erasure
Complementary to Wolfe’s (2006) notion of settler colonialism as requiring an “elimination of the native”, Fanon writes in The Wretched of the Earth (1963) that mere survival on colonised land is an act of resistance (Clare, 2013, p. 69). By extension, he argues, the production of food is necessarily a site of combat: “every date grown is a victory…” Fanon writes, “the sole obsession is the need to fill that ever-shrinking stomach, however little it demands” (p. 232, as cited by Clare, 2013, p. 69). What logically follows then, is a mission for the colonizer to either control or destroy the means for subsistence of the colonized: a mission that agents of the Zionist project have evidently embarked on, arguably reifying its status as a settler colonial project. From the establishment of the state of Israel to the present, Zionist agents have actively curtailed Palestinian food production both in its efforts to seize and expand what originally constituted Israel in 1948 (Abu Awwad, 2016, p. 543). Whilst at the turn of the twentieth century Palestine had a predominantly agrarian economy marked by a traditional subsistence production, Israel’s establishment and Al-Nakba in 1948 led to the loss of ownership of and expulsion of farmers from over three quarters of Palestine’s arable land, forcing many to flee and resulting in food insecurity for those who stayed (Abu Awwad, 2016, p. 542). In the remaining territories, now occupied by Israel, a combination of land grabbing, destruction of farming communities and the expulsion of peasants, deliberate water deprivation and the restrictions on the movement of produce in and out of the territories have brought about an agrarian crisis for Palestine, resulting in extreme levels of food insecurity and poverty in these regions (Salzmann, 2018, p. 18). For example, where in occupied Gaza agriculture once acted as an economic safety net for employment, a combination of regular Israeli raids and “access restricted zones” have led to widespread unemployment, where 70% of farmers currently live below the poverty line, in addition to resulting in food insecurity and malnutrition in the region at large (Zurayk et al., 2012, p. 9). Evidently, food production has been a target in the Zionist projects’ struggle for establishing and expanding land, arguably as it undermines the means of subsistence for Palestinian population, necessitating their migration or resulting in outright starvation.
Yellow Skin, Which Mask?
Daniel Xu
HUM309: Postcolonial Theory
Word Count: 3294
HUM309: Postcolonial Theory
Word Count: 3294
Abstract
Black Skin, White Masks, originally published in 1952, is one of Frantz Fanon’s most important works in which he shares his own experiences to present a historical critique of the effects of racism on the human psyche. His psychoanalysis reveals the oppressed Black man to navigate his environment through the performance of White-ness. Borrowing from Fanon, in this essay I embark upon my own ethnographic journey, sharing my experiences to examine and critique the way in which Yellow-ness is constructed, produced, and denied. I finish by introducing Bhabha’s understanding of mimicry, and questioning whether it offers any relief to navigating the identities of Yellow-ness and White-ness.
Yellow Skin, White Masks
I am reclining in the bottom bunk of a chic yet intimate hostel dorm in a quiet suburb of Brussels. It is only late afternoon and the room is empty, but I have had a full week on my feet. I rest my battered soles and enjoy my novel. The door opens – a new guest; sandy hair, reddened skin, lugging a heavy rucksack. I hear him thank the hostel owner as the door closes – southeast England – I think to myself. Probably just north of London. Our eyes meet hesitantly and he gives me a cautious nod. This is the crucial juncture. In a not-so-subtle Scottish accent, I call to him: “Alright mate, how’s it going?” His eyes widen, a twitch of the eyebrows; his lips curl into a soft smile-in-recovery. It is the look of comfort and relief as he realises I am not the notorious Chinese tourist. Loud, rude, broken English. No, he sees that I am one of the good ones. I am almost like him. I am almost… white.
***
“Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!”
“Why are your eyes closed, ha-ha”
“Eww, you’re Chinese – you eat dog”
“So what if you did well in the exam? You don’t count, you’re Chinese”
To quote Fanon (2008), “An unfamiliar weight burdened me […] I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors” (pp. 83-84). My yellowness defined me; it marked me as an ‘Other’ to which “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories” (p. 84) could be gratuitously attached. I desired nothing more than to be a subject in my own right, to be judged as a human being, to no longer be yellow. I could never change my skin, but I could change my history, my culture, my mask. I neglected my Chinese studies – why should I study such a useless language (quite an ironic sentiment now) – and I immersed myself in English literature and European history; my bookcase was replete with names like Jane Austen, Saul Bellow, Winston Churchill… I underwent a crisis of self-image – any valid and active sense of self was eroded by dislocation and cultural denigration; my original personality (if I can even remember it!) suppressed, consciously and unconsciously, willingly and unwittingly, by a ‘superior’ cultural model.
But before we begin in earnest, and because I feel the need to explicate this, the scholars that I discuss write of blackness and the colonised. I am neither black nor do I live under colonial rule. Nor do I claim to equate my experience with theirs. But in contemporary Europe, a range of racially and culturally marginalised groups gather under the aegis of the Black. That is not to say we suffer the same oppressions, but to make it a common cause, a common identity of Otherness.
Let us first take a moment to consider the pivotal role of English. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (1989) explain: “The study of English has always been a densely political and cultural phenomenon, a practice in which language and literature have both been called into the service of a profound and embracing nationalism” (p. 2). Since the late nineteenth century, English had emerged to replace the Classics as the marker of British civility and imperial power. In English, British colonial administrators found a valuable ally in maintaining control of indigenous populations. English establishes a ‘privileging norm’, which naturalises the constructed values of the imperial centre (civilisation, justice, etc.) and conversely establishes the savagery of the periphery, and makes the latter the target of reforming zeal (p. 3). Then when elements of the periphery encounter and seep into the privileged space of the centre, there is a process of “conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation” (p. 4). In other words, the mimicry of the centre does not only arise from a desire to be accepted, but absorbed; through mimicry, the colonised fully imbibes themselves in the dominant culture, repudiating their heritages in an attempt to become “more English than the English” (p. 4).
Likewise, Fanon argues in Black Skin, White Masks (2008) that the coloured native develops a sense of ‘self’ in relation to the coloniser, and by reflection, the coloniser develops a sense of superiority. In the struggle with his perceived sense of inadequacy, the coloured man tries to emulate the white man; he assumes Western values, language, cultural practices, and renounces his heritage. He dons white masks over black skin, and experiences a schizophrenic atmosphere.
Staying with language – “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture” (Fanon, 2008, p. 25). The Antillean who travels to the major cities of the metropole and assimilates into French culture develops an air of superiority; he stops speaking Creole apart from to servants. In his French, he imitates the ‘correct’ pronunciation to a degree that is almost comical. I think of how often I avoided my native tongue, how often I have been spoken to in Mandarin, but replied in English, how often I have turned my nose up at accented and broken English, how often I rejected the friendship of Chinese boarding students in secondary school. For Fanon to be told whilst giving a lecture on poetry: “At bottom you are a white man” (p. 25); this was what I wanted. I thought that I could prove that I was just as educated, just as civilised…
But as Fanon (2008) writes, “When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone” (p. 17). To assume the White Mask is not a ‘clean’ process; the coloured man remains dissemblingly in two places at once, which makes it impossible for the evoulé to fully join the coloniser’s ‘us’. Because no matter what, “Wherever he goes, the Negro remains a Negro” (p. 133). He instead becomes a disturbing image of Western pretence inscribed on the coloured body.
Yellow Skin, Yellow Masks
Just imagine a brown-legged son of the east in the red and black gown of an M.A. as I saw him. The effect is killing. I had an irreverent vision of the Common room in a Muhammedan get up. At the end of the proceeding, an excited bard began some Urdu verses composed in honour of the occasion. It was a tour de force of his own—but I am sorry to say he was suppressed, that is to say, they took him by the shoulders and sat him down again in his chair. Imagine that at Oxford! (Kipling, 1882, in a letter to George Willes)
How can an African or West-Indian, subjected to French rule, adopt the cultural values of his coloniser without suppressing his own way of life and turning his back to his own people and history? Similarly, the modern immigrant to Britain who acculturates or ‘integrates’ must surely lose an essential part of who he is? Does he not become a hollow being, a mimic man, an evoulé, a babu, a coconut, a banana? Now obviously I did not think in quite those terms, but I remember the curious looks and piercing laughter as I sang a rendition of My Heart Will Go On for my relatives on a return visit to China. I looked at myself and I was not happy with what I saw – I was Fanon’s Antillean ‘been-to’.
In the fifth chapter of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon (2008) saw that he would never be white enough for the coloniser to treat him as an equal. No matter what, his “blackness was there, dark and unarguable”. No matter what, he would always be the “Negro teacher, the Negro doctor [emphasis added]” (p. 88). And although I considered myself fiercely British, I was fiercely British because it required defending again and again. No matter what, I would always be asked: “Where are you from? No, where are you originally from?” Fanon’s reaction was to study his own culture with a celebratory zeal, to turn to negritude (pp. 93-97). Now instead of denying my skin, I too embraced it.
The words “you don’t count – you’re one of the good ones, you’re one of us” were no longer a source of comfort and pride, but a testimony to my betrayal. Oh venerable and sagacious ancestors, pray forgive me! In a dialectical turn, and with such vigour that would make Hegel proud, I disavowed ‘Britishness’. I embarked on a race to reclaim myself, a transformation of truth and value – I wanted to be Chinese. I threw myself into Chinese literature, film, music, and history. Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdom, the Analects, even Mao’s Little Red Book – these books that I had always owned but sat neglected and dust-laden on a bookshelf – now found their new lease of life. In hindsight, I consider myself fortunate that I had access to such a litany of ‘authentic’ Chinese literature and history (cf. the culture of the national bourgeoisie in Wretched of the Earth).
In a similar vein, as post-colonial societies sought to establish their difference from the centre, those who recognised the collusion between English literature and cultural suppression sought to isolate literature from linguistics, and subject both to a critical re-evaluation. They realised that little genuine decolonisation could take place so long as the nexus of power involving literature and language remained in place, and retained the unquestioned status of culture, tradition, and education (Ashcroft et al., 1989, p. 4).
Yellow Skin, Which Mask?
The personal snapshots above are accounts from my mid-late teenage years, and in the years hence, I have swayed one way and the other; this cultural pendulum consuming me with self-loathing and pride in equal measure. Perhaps Homi Bhabha may yet offer some relief to this anguish, this Fanonian schizophrenia, this excruciating dialectic-with-no-end. Like me, Bhabha does not neatly fit into a prescribed box. As a Zoroastrian Parsi, sandwiched between the cultural conflict (often violent) of the Hindu and Muslim communities, he has had to constantly negotiate his identity. Thus, Bhabha does not write from a simplistic and binary position; he believes in the possibility of the negotiation of boundaries to transcend the supposedly irreconcilable differences between cultures (Abruna, 2003, p. 91). Might I also reach such a negotiated cultural identity?
For Bhabha (1994), the construction of identity within colonial discourse depends on the concept of fixity, which functions at the level of signs and signifiers to demarcate racial difference. The stereotype is fixity’s major discursive strategy, which restricts the interpretation of signs/signifiers to their fixed meanings: race becomes an “ineradicable sign of negative difference” (p. 108). I return to Fanon’s line, “Wherever he goes, the Negro remains a Negro” (Fanon, 2008, p. 133). Against this fixity, Bhabha uses the term ‘hybrid’ to denote the people found in the in-between spaces of these fixed identities. These in-between ‘third spaces’ offer the possibility of cultural hybridity that “entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 4). Indeed, for Bhabha, culture itself is never temporally and spatially fixed, but is in constant flux; culture in its purest form is found in the interstices. The concept of “homogenous national cultures […] or ‘organic’ ethnic communities […] are in the process of profound redefinition” (p. 5). Hybridity then is empowering and emancipatory; it allows the individual to play with their identities, to reconstruct themselves, and overcome stereotypes.
Bhabha therefore offers a sympathetic and subversive understanding of mimicry. For Bhabha (1984), mimicry “emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (p. 126). However, he is ambiguous as to whom it ultimately gives power – the coloniser or the colonised.
Colonial mimicry is the “desire for a reformed, recognizable Other […] that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, 1984, p. 126). The process is complex and negotiated. The coloniser desires the coloured man to become more like him, someone who reproduces his habits and values, but still, the coloniser maintains a clear sense of difference, for god forbid the white man and coloured man become equals! Thus, ironically, colonial mimicry must “continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference,” which Bhabha terms ‘ambivalence’ (p. 126). Ambivalence disrupts the simple relationship between coloniser and colonised; since it cannot produce ‘real Englishmen’, it produces subjects whose mimicry never strays far from mockery – a mode of representation that “mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable” (p. 128).
Bhabha illustrates with an example: writing in 1792, Charles Grant advocated that Christian doctrines and moral codes be fused with divisive caste practices to produce “partial” diffusion of ‘Britishness’ throughout India to construct an appropriate form of colonial subjectivity amenable to social control. If the Indian were to be fully ‘educated’, he would revolt against his coloniser. But inadvertently, Grant produces an image of Christianity that is patently un-Christian; he mocks the proselytising project and undermines the colonial mission (1984, p. 127). We see it still in the message to immigrants today – ‘Speak English, embrace Western values, integrate into our society, but keep out of our social clubs, don’t marry our women, and don’t you dare complain’. The West’s treatment of the Other “alienates its own language of liberty and produces another knowledge of its norms” (p. 126). Thus, in an ironic turn, the subject, the colonised who desires ‘authenticity’, finds that the authenticity of the original is destabilised through his mimicry; the colonial project thus generates the seeds of its own destruction.
So perhaps I can be less harsh on myself – I have not yet sold my soul to the white man. Though adopting British cultural habits and values, the result is not a faithful, obedient reproduction, but “at once resemblance and menace”, always potentially and strategically insurgent (Bhabha, 1984, p. 127). For in its ambivalence, mimicry transforms the “founding objects of the Western world” into “accidental objets trouvés of the colonial discourse”; the ideals of the West become meaningless “part-objects” (p. 132). In other words, mimicry is the performance that reveals the artificiality of Western power symbols.
Mimicry and ambivalence is then Bhabha’s way of turning the tables on colonial discourse. In the words of Robert J. C. Young (1995), the colonised, the periphery, the marginal, the doubtful constitutes the centre as an “equivocal, indefinite, indeterminate ambivalence”, creating cracks in the certainty of colonial dominance (p. 161). But we should not think of this as a simple reversal of the binary; both coloniser and colonised participate in this ambivalence. Indeed, Bhabha seems to suggest the very engagement between the culture of the coloniser and colonised inevitably leads to an ambivalence that dismantles the coloniser’s dominance. Here, I return to the concept of hybridity. Like Bhabha, I must resist the urge to polarise, resist identifying with the fixed ‘us versus them’. In his words, “Must we always polarise to polemicize?” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 28). A neatly compartmentalised identity is impossible; it would be at most a partial representation. I should seek out the in-between – the uneasy, restless space that allows for multiple subject positions (p. 2).
On another, simpler strand, I can approach mimicry as strategic appropriation, as how a dominated culture can use the tools of the dominant discourse to resist its political and cultural control. I think of Amrit Rao from E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924). Amrit Rao (an advocate) defends Aziz (an Indian doctor) against the charge of raping Adela (a British schoolmistress) by arguing that British justice and law should apply to Indians as to the British. He becomes feared by the colonial authorities for subverting their dominating power. I think of some of the founding figures of modern China – the likes of Sun Yat-Sen, Deng Xiaoping, and Zhou Enlai, all of whom received a Western education, which they appropriated in their struggles against imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. Had I not received the education I had, and absorbed the values that I had, would I even be engaging in this critical self-inquiry?
There is also the question of language: I loathe to admit that my command of Mandarin and Chinese script lags behind my facility of English. The installation of Standard English as the norm, marginalising all other languages and variants as a method of control, does not escape my attention (Ashcroft et al., 1989, p. 7). But a central thesis of The Empire Writes Back (Ashcroft, et al., 1989) is that English and its discursive forms can be used to convey differing cultural experiences. By interpolating these accounts into the dominant modes of representation, they reach the widest possible audience. Thus, in the very act of writing this essay, have I not appropriated the language, with all its power and signification of authority, from the dominant culture?
Need I also self-flagellate for essentialising ‘yellowness’ and ‘Britishness’? Gayatri Spivak speaks of strategic essentialism. Although essentialism might reproduce problematic knowledges of the “other”, this temporary, strategic essentialism can be a strategy for the “other” to create solidarity and a sense of belonging to mobilise for social action (Ashcroft, 1998, pp. 159-160). Has the essentialising of myself as ‘Yellow’ not motivated me to embrace Chinese culture and history, to seek out my fellow “others”, and to cast off the self-loathing?
Yellow Skin, Any Mask
Whither should I go now? What is the cure to my “Manichean delirium” (Bhabha, 1986, p. xxvii)? I must forget the myth of authenticity and identity. I must continually negotiate the contradictory strains of the languages lived, and the languages learned. In fact, I should not think of identification as the affirmation of a pre-given identity; it is the production of an image which gives transforming power to the subject in assuming that image. The West has inscribed in me the value of liberty. Now I must make use of that liberty to assert my presence, to make people uncomfortable, to assert my space, to be as yellow as I want, and as white as I want. For there is one thing I know for sure: I will forever be “not quite/not white.”
I am drawn at this point also to think of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities. For Anderson (1983), the nation is an imagined community, “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (p. 49). Such a community is thus reified by communication – print capitalism that allows a language, history, and beliefs to be standardised and disseminated. I had variably thrown myself into British literature or into Chinese literature – for the lack of being white or living in China, being British or being Chinese was in the first instance engaging with the literature. Perhaps I should have seen then the emptiness of my endeavour, and the emptiness of national identity, for both communities are ultimately imagined. I, nor anyone else, has privileged access to real Chineseness or Britishness.
On a final note, and in the spirit of community, I want to remind the reader that one needs not be black or colonised to use the tools of their self-examination. The crisis of self-image does not only result from overtly oppressive racism or colonisation. Dislocation, in all its forms – slavery, indentured labourers, free settlers, economic migrants, refugees, etc. result in a dialectic between place and displacement. In our present world, which teeters between globalisation and xenophobia, the theoretical tools which were applied to master/slave, colonised/coloniser deserve to be repurposed.
On the Relationship between Working Memory and Musical Performance Under Delayed Auditory Feedback
Daniel Xu, Gauri Ramsoekh, Oskar Kruse, & Yadav Permalloo
LSC217: Systematic Musicology
Word Count: 3185
LSC217: Systematic Musicology
Word Count: 3185
Abstract
Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) is a manipulation in which a short time delay is introduced between a person’s actions and the sound of that action reaching their ears. DAF impairs musical performance by providing incorrect feedback that disrupts sensorimotor integration. Previous research has shown that working memory facilitates sensorimotor integration of speech production by enhancing the perception of feedback errors whilst inhibiting compensatory vocal behaviour. This study investigates the relationship between working memory and sensorimotor integration of musical performance using a DAF paradigm. We hypothesise that greater working memory capacity allows for better compensation for the negative effects of DAF on musical performance. Participants’ working memory and DAF effect on piano performance were measured separately. We found that the musical performance of participants with better working memory was less affected by DAF. Our results are in keeping with previous literature that suggest a top-down influence from working memory on sensorimotor integration.
Keywords: delayed auditory feedback, sensorimotor integration, N-back task, working memory, musical performance, systematic musicology
Impairment under DAF (and other altered auditory feedback paradigms) has been interpreted as evidence for a sensory guidance hypothesis, i.e., disruption of sensorimotor integration (e.g. Finney & Warren, 2002; Havlicek, 1968; Lee, 1950). Musical performance is a complex sensorimotor task that on most instruments involves a sequenced execution of finger movements, which in turn produces an intended sequence of sounds. The sound output and motor plan are coordinated, with the auditory feedback serving as a continuous guide to ongoing musical performance (Zatorre et al., 2007). Put simply, the predicted consequence of a motor command is compared to the actual sensory feedback; incongruences between prediction and feedback lead to motor commands that attempt to correct for this mismatch. Impairment under DAF can thus be interpreted as corrective motor commands to prediction-feedback mismatch – but in the case of DAF, the feedback itself is incorrect.
The present study investigates the executive functions that might modulate sensorimotor integration in musical performance, and in particular, whether working memory might have a role in musical performance under DAF. Working memory is a limited-capacity brain system responsible for the temporary storage and manipulation of information for ongoing tasks (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). There exists already a body of literature suggesting that working memory exerts a top-down influence on sensorimotor integration during speech production. Li et al. (2015) trained the working memory of healthy participants and measured their cortical event related potential (ERP) responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback; ERPs known as the N1-P2 complex were modulated by prediction-feedback mismatches. Their results suggest that participants who received working memory training exhibited better detection and correction of feedback errors. In a later study, the same group replicated their earlier findings, and further found that employment of working memory resources decreased the participant’s ability to detect and correct for altered feedback (Guo et al., 2017). The authors suggest that working memory exerts top-down modulations on sensorimotor integration for speech control by facilitating the processing of feedback errors, including a role in inhibiting the compensatory adjustments of incorrect auditory feedback.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, such a relationship between working memory and sensorimotor integration of musical performance has yet to be established. Nevertheless, a link between working memory and musical performance has been demonstrated previously. For instance, Maes et al. (2015) found that engagement of working memory resources impaired the rhythmicity of cellists’ bow strokes. Meinz and Hambrick (2010) found that working memory capacity was a better predictor of piano sight-reading ability than years of experience or weekly hours of practice. However, these studies only indicate a link between working memory and musical performance in general, and not sensorimotor integration during musical performance specifically.
Perhaps more presciently, there is an overlap between the neuroarchitecture engaged in tonal working memory and that engaged during musical performance under altered auditory feedback. In participants undertaking pitch memory tasks, functional imaging found increased activation in the supramarginal gyrus, superior and inferior parietal lobules (IPL, SPL), area Sylvian-parietal-temporal (Spt), insula, superior temporal gyrus (STG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), premotor cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA), and Broca’s area (Gaab et al., 2003; Zatorre et al., 1994). Pfordresher et al. (2014) used fMRI to measure brain activity in pianists playing under normal and altered (DAF and pitch-shifted) auditory feedback. Altered auditory feedback was associated with increased activity across similar regions of frontal (IFG, SMA, Broca’s area), posterior parietal (IPL, Spt), and superior temporal (STG) cortical regions, as well as the insula and cerebellum. In other words, it appears that both working memory and musical performance under DAF draw upon similar neural networks.
The present study seeks to further demonstrate a connection between working memory and sensorimotor integration in musical performance. We separately measured the working memory capacity and piano performance under DAF of healthy participants. Based on the existing literature, we hypothesised that participants with greater working memory capacity will also be better able to compensate for the deleterious effect of DAF on musical performance.
Methodology
Participants
Twenty-three (9 male, 14 female) participants were recruited from the student community of Erasmus University College. Mean age was 21.87 (SD = 4.07). Sixteen participants reported playing an instrument; 12 reported piano as their primary instrument (mean years of instruction = 6.07; SD = 3.28). Twenty participants were right handed, and none reported any hearing impairment.Materials
Musical Performance Task
This part of the experiment involved multiple performances of an excerpt of music composed by one of the authors (DX), shown in Figure 1. The excerpt contained 22 notes and was designed to be easy to learn and repeatable by participants without prior musical instruction. The excerpt was a single line melody with no dynamic or expressive instructions, performed by the right hand only without requiring any changes to hand position. Directions for fingering were indicated under the musical notation, and the keyboard keys were marked correspondingly.Figure 1
Musical Excerpt
Participants performed on an M-Audio Oxygen 25 keyboard. Auditory output from the keyboard was delayed using a Black Arts delay device, and amplified with an Onyx Black-Jack USB recording interface. Participants heard auditory feedback through Bose QC-15 noise cancelling headphones at a listening level considered comfortable by the participant. Keypress responses and auditory output were recorded by a MacBook Pro 13’ 2018 laptop using the Ableton digital audio workstation software.
Working Memory Task
Working memory capacity was measured using an N-back (2-back) task, available at psytoolkit.org. The N-back task is popular amongst researchers and easily administrable, with strong face validity (Owen et al., 2005). The task asks participants to determine whether the currently presented stimulus is the same as the stimulus that was presented N (in our case, 2) items previously. The stimulus set of the N-back task consisted of 15 alphanumeric letters; each stimulus was presented maximally for 760 ms, with an intertrial interval of 2000 ms.Figure 2
N-Back Task example where the current presented stimulus is the same as the stimulus N(2) items previously.
Note. Created with PsyToolkit. http://psytoolkit.org/experiment-library/experiment_nback2.html
Participants performed the N-back task on a MacBook Pro 13’ 2018 laptop and were asked to indicate a positive response with a touchpad tap. Auditory feedback (‘good’ or ‘bad’) was provided after each tap through headphones. Participant instructions and a practice block were built into the psytoolkit programme.
Procedure
Participants were randomised as to whether they performed the music task or working memory task first; there was a 5-minute rest in-between tasks to minimise fatigue effects.Musical Performance Task
To familiarise the participant with the music, each participant practiced the musical excerpt under normal feedback conditions until they could play it comfortably and accurately, i.e. they felt comfortable playing at uniform tempo and without error.For the experimental trials, participants were instructed to play at a uniform tempo without expressive variation; they were instructed to keep going if they made a mistake or speed up if they slowed down. A metronome speed was chosen that approached the maximum comfortable play speed of the participant; the same speed was used for all trials of that participant to provide a consistent reference tempo. The metronome played for eight beats prior to each trial; the metronome stopped and participants were instructed to start playing on the following beat whilst maintaining this tempo. A metronome playing throughout the trial was considered inappropriate due to its disorientating effect in the delay conditions.
To generate a base performance for comparison, each participant played one trial under normal (no delay) feedback conditions. Participants then performed one trial each of three feedback conditions: 150 ms, 250 ms, and 350 ms delay. The order of feedback delay for each participant was randomised.
Working Memory Task
Our WM task was provided by psytoolkit.org which includes participant instructions. Briefly, participants were informed that they would see a sequence of letters and to respond with a mouse click if they saw the same letter two trials ago. There was a practice block of 25 trials to familiarise participants with the task, followed by two experimental blocks of 25 trials each. A full overview of the procedure is detailed on their website.Data Analysis
Data were managed in Excel (Microsoft) and analysed using Python and SPSS (IBM). Working memory capacity was quantified using two measures from the N-back task: mean reaction time (milliseconds) and accuracy (percentage correct); participants made a mistake when they failed to respond to a match, or responded to a non-match. Faster reaction time and higher accuracy are both indicative of greater working memory capacity (Owen et al., 2005).We introduce a novel method of quantifying musical performance. Previous studies on musical performance under DAF have tended to quantify musical performance by counting discrete error events, e.g. the number of note deletions, additions, or substitutions (Finney, 1997), or by measuring the total time taken to play the musical excerpt (e.g. Gates & Bradshaw, 1974). The former method does not account for participants slowing down which would reduce the number of note errors, and the latter method does not account for fast but erroneous playing. In the present study, we quantify musical performance by generating note-time maps from the MIDI file of each performance, which we compared against note-time maps of perfect performance at the participant’s reference tempo. Musical performance was quantified as the percentage time of non-concordance between the two mappings, or put more simply, the percentage time of erroneous playing (%TEP). In contrast to previously used methods, %TEP generates a single continuous measure of musical performance that accounts for all error types. Table 1 demonstrates this procedure using simple fictional values.
Table 1
Quantification of Musical Performance
| Perfect note-time map at participant reference tempo | Participant note-time map | Difference (ms) | ||
| Note | Duration (ms) | Note | Duration (ms) | |
| C | 1000 | C | 1000 | 0 |
| D | 1000 | D | 1500 | 500 |
| E | 1000 | E | 1000 | 0 |
| C | 1000 | D | 1000 | 1000 |
| Total | 4500 | 1500 |
Results
Table 2 presents a summary of musical performance and working memory measures for all participants.
Table 2
Summary of Musical Performance and Working Memory Measures
| M | SD | |
| Musical performance (%TEP) | ||
| Normal feedback | 13.40 | 7.19 |
| 150 ms DAF | 17.34 | 9.84 |
| 250 ms DAF | 22.14 | 9.29 |
| 350 ms DAF | 19.25 | 8.09 |
| Working memory | ||
| Reaction time (ms) | 700.32 | 22.96 |
| Accuracy (% correct) | 88 | 7 |
Musical Performance
%TEP was lowest for normal auditory feedback, reaching a peak at 250 ms delay. Given that our novel method yields a similar relationship between musical performance and delay interval as Gates et al.’s seminal paper (1974), we suggest that %TEP has at least strong face validity as a measure of musical performance. Independent samples t-tests found was no significant effect on musical performance under any feedback condition from sex (ps > .25), dominant hand (ps > .5), or ability to read music (ps > .25), though as expected, musical performance was significantly better under all feedback conditions for pianists than for non-pianists (ps < .05). Nevertheless, the improvement by pianists was consistent – between 7.52 to 8.16 %TEP – across all feedback conditions; in other words, piano playing did not exhibit an interaction with feedback condition (see Figure 2).Figure 3
Musical Performance for each Feedback Condition
DAF Effect on Musical Performance
Our interest is the effect of DAF on musical performance, and not musical performance under DAF per se. Thus, we quantify DAF effect as the %TEP at no delay subtracted from the %TEP at 250 ms DAF since this was the maximal impairment interval. The mean DAF effect was 8.74 %TEP (SD = 7.09). There was no significant effect of sex ( Mmale = 9.02, Mfemale = 8.56, t(21) = -0.15, p = .884), ability to read music (Myes = 9.02, Mno = 8.53, t(21) = -0.16, p = .875), piano playing ( Myes = 8.74, Mno = 8.75, t(21) = 0.01, p = .996), or dominant hand (Mright = 8.19, Mleft = 12.40, t(2.11) = 0.51, p = .657). Moreover, there was no significant correlation between DAF effect and years of musical instruction (r(21) = -.12, p = .596) or reference tempo (r(21) = -.15, p = .507)
Working Memory
Mean N-back reaction time for all participants was 700.32 ms (SD = 22.96) and accuracy was 88% (SD = 7). Interestingly, reaction time was significantly faster for women than for men (Mfemale = 691.92, Mmale = 713.39, t(17.96) = -2.87, p = .010), though men were more accurate but not significantly so (
Mfemale
= 86.29,
Mmale
= 91.33, t(21) = -1.86, p = .077). There was no effect on either reaction time or accuracy from playing piano, being able to read music, or dominant hand (ps > .1). Moreover, there was no significant correlation between either measures and years of musical instruction (|rs| < 0.15, ps > .5).Working Memory and DAF Effect
The main concern of this study is the relationship between working memory and DAF effect on musical performance; we hypothesised that participants with better working memory would be less affected by DAF. Figures 3 and 4 present the scatterplots for DAF effect against N-back accuracy and reaction time. We observed a moderate negative correlation between DAF effect and N-back accuracy (r(21) = -.36, p = .044), and a weak positive correlation with N-back reaction time (r(21) = .14, p = .260) (ps, one-tailed). Although correlation with reaction time was not significant, taken as a whole these results suggest that better working memory is correlated with the ability to overcome the effect of DAF.Figure 4
Scatterplot of DAF Effect against N-back Accuracy
Figure 5
Scatterplot of DAF Effect against N-back Reaction Time
Finally, we performed a multiple linear regression to determine if working memory or any other variables were predictors of DAF effect. Sex, ability to read music, piano playing, years of musical instruction, reference tempo, N-back accuracy, and N-back reaction time were entered into the model. Although the model did not reach significance (F(7,15) = 1.29, p = .33), it did generate an R2 = .37. Interestingly, of all the entered variables, only N-back task accuracy reached significance with p = .029, and it also had the biggest effect size, with standardised β = -.57 (see Table 3). No other entered variables were close to significance (ps > .15).
Table 3
Predictors of DAF Effect
| β | p | |
| Sex | 0.24 | .380 |
| Ability to read music | 0.47 | .166 |
| Piano playing | -0.16 | .683 |
| Years of musical instruction | -0.40 | .269 |
| Performance tempo | -0.33 | .161 |
| N-back accuracy | -0.57 | .029 |
| N-back reaction time | 0.34 | .210 |
Note. Standardised β.
Discussion and Conclusion
We hypothesised that participants with better working memory are less affected by delayed auditory feedback during musical performance. Our results tentatively support our hypothesis. A moderate negative correlation was found between DAF effect and N-back task accuracy which was significant at p = .044. Moreover, a multiple linear regression with DAF effect as the dependent variable found that N-back task accuracy was the predictor with the greatest effect size and the only predictor to reach statistical significance with p = .029, although the model itself was not significant. N-back reaction time, by contrast, did not appear to exhibit a relationship with DAF effect, nor did any of our other recorded variables (sex, dominant hand, ability to read music, piano playing, years of musical instruction, reference tempo).
Although our results certainly point towards a relationship between working memory and DAF effect, it is disappointing that many of our main findings did not reach significance at p < .05. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, we had access to a limited participant pool, resulting in N = 23, of which only half were piano players. To the best of our knowledge, all prior studies utilising a DAF-piano paradigm recruited only experienced piano players, for instance “students majoring in instrumental music education” (Havlicek, 1968, p. 311). Although we attempted to design a musical performance task suitable for complete novices, we cannot rule out a learning effect that may have interacted with our experiment, nor can we rule out a three-way interaction between DAF effect, prior piano playing ability, and working memory. Indeed, as a post hoc analysis, we ran a correlation between DAF effect and N-back accuracy separately for pianists and non-pianists. Both the correlation coefficient and significance level were weaker for non-pianists than for pianists (rpianists = -.46, rnon-pianists = -.21; ppianists = .068, pnon-pianists = .264), and it is regrettable that more pianists were not available for recruitment to this study. Moreover, the inclusion of both pianists and non-pianists meant that performance tempo was highly variable, ranging from 60 to 110 beats per minute. Finney and Warren (2002) found that the maximal impairment delay is dependent on performance rate; however, the present study takes 250 ms to be the peak impairment interval for all participants.
It is also interesting to note that DAF effect correlated significantly with N-back accuracy but not with N-back reaction time, despite both purporting to be measures of working memory. Although researchers have been using the N-back test extensively as a working memory paradigm since the 1960s, more recent validation studies have cast doubt on the N-back test as a measure of individual differences in working memory (Jaeggi et al., 2010).
Our results are in line with previous research indicating a relationship between working memory and sensorimotor integration of speech production (e.g. Guo et al., 2017; Li et al., 2015). However, ours is the first study to investigate working memory and sensorimotor integration with a DAF-musical performance paradigm. The results appear to support the model proposed by Guo et al. (2017) whereby working memory exerts a top-down influence on sensorimotor integration, possibly by facilitating the processing of feedback errors and inhibiting compensatory adjustments to altered feedback. That being said, it is not a given that the mechanisms and pathways of sensorimotor integration of speech production correspond to that of musical performance. For one, musical performance also relies on visual and tactile feedback, although the available research does indicate that the auditory system is dominant in this regard (Comstock et al., 2018). Nevertheless, the interactions between auditory, visual, and tactile systems on the sensorimotor integration of musical performance is underexplored, and further research in this area is needed to answer these questions.
Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar: Affirming or Resisting Heteronormative Genders and Sexualities?
Hannah Weise
CM2076: Diversity in Popular Culture and Advertising
Word Count: 2754
CM2076: Diversity in Popular Culture and Advertising
Word Count: 2754
Abstract
Harry Styles’ music video to his song Watermelon Sugar elicited reactions ranging from accusations of being overly sexual and objectifying women, to praise for representing female sexuality without judgment. By adopting a queer reading and considering the video’s intertextual context of the video, this analysis seeks to understand how the video elicited such contradictory reactions, and how it draws on and contributes to discourse. The multiple ways in which the video embodies the doing of gender and sexuality are unravelled, to understand how it references hegemonic and counter-hegemonic diversity discourses of diversity. The analysis demonstrates how the music video both reifies and resists a heteronormative framework, allowing viewers to adopt different subject positions – depending on a viewer’s gender, sexuality, and knowledge of other media texts surrounding Styles and the video.
Discourse has been described as the “circulating of meanings in society” (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015, p. 41). It is a framework used to make sense of the world, is shared by individuals within a society, and is thus socio-historically specific. Through a dialogic mechanism, every event is interpreted by drawing on discourse, before influencing discourse itself. Thus, discourse simultaneously is and produces knowledge, or "a cultural agreement of what is true" (Riley & Evans, 2017). However, some individuals and events have more influence than others in the process of defining knowledge – an imbalance related to power according to Foucault (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015). Media texts especially hold a lot of power in this process, thus making it important to deconstruct and understand them.
To do so, a main analytical concept that which the following analysis relies on is the “doing” of gender or sexuality. Whereas essentialism assumes a clear link between sex and gender, doing diversity refers to the notion that such a sex/gender binary is less fixed by nature, and more influenced by individuals themselves and the discourses they circulate. By doing gender, individuals create the socially constructed differences between genders and sexualities (West & Zimmerman, 1987).
Throughout this paper, a queer reading of the video is intended by breaking away from a traditional binary and studying how the message might be read as counter-hegemonic. Whether or not the media text was intended as queer1 does not matter – so long as it can be read that way, it will impact gender politics (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015). This begs the question: How does Harry Styles’ music video Watermelon Sugar play with intertextuality in referencing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic diversity discourses of diversity in terms of gender and sexuality?
1 Throughout this paper, the term queer is used broadly to refer to LGBT+ sexualities and identities. Using terms such as “gay” as opposed to “straight” would once again introduce a binary, which is precisely what this analysis aims to distance itself from. Instead, it refers to Wander’s (2018) conception of queer, defined as follows: “In place of falsely stable and often exclusionary unities such as gay and straight people or gay and straight culture, ‘queer’ names those bodies and practices that stand askew of what ‘normal’ folks look like and do” (p. 63)
Intertextuality’s Role in Forming Subject Positions
Intertextuality refers to the notion that a text is never decoded on its own – instead, its meaning is influenced and co-constructed by other texts. Thus, it is critical to acknowledge other relevant texts when analysing a particular text’s meaning. Intertextuality can be intended or inescapable. The latter refers to the lack of control a producer has over the other texts that an audience has consumed which will inevitably influence their understanding (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015).
Such is the case with Harry Styles’ reputation and media coverage. During his time as a boyband member and still to this day, the media has frequently referred to Styles as a “womanizer” (Twersky, 2019). At the same time however, many fans have slash shipped Styles with fellow band member Louis Tomlinson. The dispute around his sexuality remains a topic of actuality, although Styles himself remains ambiguous about his identity, repeatedly choosing not to label his sexuality in interviews (Roach, 2018).
Rather, during his more recent career as solo artist, Styles has “embraced a more flamboyant, glam-rock aesthetic with wildly patterned, glittery suits and jumpsuits” (Roach, 2018, p. 180). During his concerts, he takes pride flags from the audience, waves them around and fixes them to his microphone, prompting fans to be themselves and “treat people with kindness”, a phrase used as his tour tagline (Roach, 2018).
Intended intertextuality is equally of equal relevance to understand the music video. While Watermelon Sugar’s lyrics appear at first to reminisce about a past love and summer evenings, interpretations have quickly turned towards less innocent themes.16 Furthermore, the music video can be seen as connected to the previous video for the song Lights Up, also representing Styles surrounded by women and men (Styles, 2019a). Lights Up was released on National Coming Out Day, with a media campaign surrounding the lyric “Do you know who you are?” (Styles, 2019a), prompting many fans to interpret the lyrics as Styles addressing his sexuality.
2 In fact, Zane Lowe voiced a common interpretation of the lyrics, arguing that “everyone’s kind of figured out what it is about, the joys of mutually appreciated oral pleasure”, to which Styles simply answered “Is that what it’s about? I don’t know” (Styles, 2019b, 25:03), leaving the song open to interpretation.
These examples of intertextuality examples, and all other texts that an individual may have consumed, allow for a plethora of subject positions, or all the possible ways an individual may understand a text (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015) – to illustrate, some may read Styles as a womanizer, others as an icon of the queer community.
Doing Gender
The Protagonists’ Image: Hegemonic Gender Conceptions of Gender?
Harry Styles’s Image
Styles’ image in the music video can be read in line with hegemonic conceptions of masculinity, as he is surrounded by women17, and is being touched and kissed on the cheek by them. In fact, upon first look, it appears as though he is the only man in the video. Furthermore, although he changes outfits throughout the video, he always remains fully dressed, whereas the women are represented in swimwear (Styles, 2020). 3 Throughout this analysis, the protagonists are referred to as “women” and “men”. However, the decision to categorize them as such relies on heteronormative gender conceptions of gender and should therefore be treated critically. The protagonists may identify as non-binary, queer, a different gender than the one referred to, or differently altogether. Although this may at first seem to contradict the intention of a queer reading, these gender binaries are solely relied on to deconstruct how their representations in the video may reify or counter the binary itself – in short, as a tool to ultimately step away from a binary reading.
On the other hand, however, although Styles does not stop the women from touching him, he never attempts to reciprocate; not once does he kiss, touch, or even pointedly look at a woman’s body. Moreover, rather than portraying traditional masculine clothing such as tracksuits or expensive sportswear, he opts for an androgynous aesthetic (Roach, 2018) – including nail polish, pearl necklaces, rings, flower- and heart-shaped sunglasses, crop tops, and scarves featuring flower patterns (Styles, 2020).
The Women’s Image
The women in the video almost all fit the current Western ideal for female beauty: they are slim, toned, have smooth skin without body hair, and are wearing make-up and nail polish (Calogero et al., 2007). However, besides touching Styles, they are also caressing each other and themselves in sensual ways (Styles, 2020). These actions could be interpreted as countering a heteronormative framework – or not, as is discussed in the following sections.
The Two Men’s Image
Next to Styles, the video also features two men. However, they are only visible when the group assembles for a picture, and are barely noticeable among the group of women for the rest of the video. Nevertheless, it is worthof interest to mentioning them, as they may reference a counter-hegemonic discourse, both by their presence around Styles in this sexually evocative video and by their looks. Indeed, one of the men displays a counter-hegemonic, androgynous style with his long hair and very short pink shorts. The other man however, just like Styles and unlike the women in the video, is fully dressed – once more playing into hegemonic gender conceptions of gender. Moreover, the men are never at the centre of the action or close to Styles, thus failing to evoke queer inklings (Styles, 2020).
Objectification, Active Subjects, and Passive Objects: Mulvey’s Gaze Theory
Next to understanding the ways in which the protagonists' image may reference (counter-)hegemonic conceptions of doing gender, it is relevant of interest to study their actions to understand how these may reify or counter the narrative told by their image. To do so, the power relations between protagonists on screen and between audience and protagonists must be broken down. As previously noted, Styles never pointedly looks at any of the women's bodies, as he rather looks into the camera or enjoys eating fruit (Styles, 2020). This fact counters Mulvey's (1989) gaze theory and description of gender roles in film. Mulvey's theory postulates that within the film genre, males are presented as active – dominant, in control of the action, bearers of the gaze - whereas females are presented as passive, to-be-looked-at sexual objects. Women on screen become sexual objects on two levels: for the other protagonists on screen, and for the audience, which is to identify with the male character and to possess the women through identification with him (Mulvey, 1989). Styles, however, does not exercise the male gaze as described by Mulvey as he does not look at the women's bodies, and appears to show no interest in possessing or objectifying the female protagonists. His actions and position in the video thus counter a traditional heteronormative framework.
However, a thorough understanding of the gender relations on screen must consider the power relations between the protagonists and the audience. Whereas males looking straight into the camera defy objectification by the viewer (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015), frames of women's fragmented bodies, in which body parts such as legs or hips are represented in close-up shots, facilitate their bodies’ objectification of their bodies by the viewer. Such close-up shots of female body parts can be recognised in the present video, whereas Styles' body is never in a shot where the viewer does not also look at his face. In fact, in most of the shots, Styles looks directly at the camera and at the viewer (Styles, 2020), preventing objectification of his body, but not of those of the female protagonists’ bodies –, thus failing at countering a heteronormative framework.
Furthermore, the audience’s gender of the audience is relevantof interest here: although Styles’ audience is often assumed to be composed of heterosexual teen girls and gay men, his fanbase also includes a multitude of other queer identities, particularly many queer women (Roach, 2018). According to Mulvey’s (1989) gaze theory, the audience should identify with Styles, the main male protagonist amongst all the women showing interest in him. In the case of gay men, this would be in line with gender, but not with sexual orientation. In the case of queer and heterosexual women, this would not be in line with gender, and would only be in line with sexual orientation for the former.4
4 These insights may hint towards the video’s resistance of a heteronormative framework. However, the contradiction identified in this analysis may be a direct consequence of the contradictions within Mulvey’s theory itself. Indeed, it has been criticized for its positioning of the female audience, which should not be able to enjoy a film, considering it would imply women objectifying themselves (Krijnen & Van Bauwel, 2015).
From the Ritualization of Subordination to the Hot Lesbian: Gender Advertising Codes
The actions of the protagonists and their relations to heteronormative discourses of gender roles can further be unravelled by considering the codes Goffman described to analyse gender in advertising. Each of Goffman's codes – ranging from the protagonists' relative size to the portrayal of the family – was frequently found in advertising and contributed to the depiction of hegemonic gender roles. Interestingly, almost none of these codes can be recognized in the present music video – except for the feminine touch, which describes women's light, caressing touch (Belknap & Leonard, 1991). The lack of Goffman's gender codes may point towards a less hegemonic conception of gender roles in the video. It could also be the result of the shift in the women’s representation of women in advertising described by Gill (2008).
Gill argues that there has been a move towards a more autonomous and sexually empowered woman, and describes three figures which can be recognized in contemporary advertising. The shift illustrated by Gill can be observed in Styles’ video, as two of the figures she describes can be recognized. Firstly, Gill outlines the “young, heterosexually desiring midriff”, which is fitting to the women of the video with the exception ofexcept for the emphasis on heterosexuality. Indeed, the women’s bodies are emphasised, as well as the notion of choice and autonomy, seeing that the women also please themselves without the help of the male figure’s help (Styles, 2020).
Secondly, the figure of the “hot lesbian” can be recognized as in that the women are touching each other in sexually evocative ways, while at the same time portraying beauty in a very heteronormative way (Gill, 2008). Thus, while the figures in the video may, on the surface, seem to counter a hegemonic discourse by depicting autonomous and empowered women, these figures still operate within a heteronormative framework. The midriff must be heterosexual5, and though the hot lesbian may be queer, she plays into heteronormative beauty ideals as much as the midriff does.
5 Gill (2008) further describes other inherent contradictions of the midriff figure, including the fact that while the emphasis is on autonomy and independent choice, the woman remains as objectified as before – only now, she is choosing to submit herself to others' gaze.
An Exploration of Autonomy and Production Through Little Women
Safreen Afsal Channaneth
HUM208: Literature and Politics
Word Count: 3454
HUM208: Literature and Politics
Word Count: 3454
Abstract
A work that continues to enchant readers long after it has been written, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott has been adapted numerous times since its original publication, with each adaptation taking the core of the story and reworking it to create something a little different every time. This paper dives into the creation and evolution of Little Women, using the concepts of autonomy and cultural production to understand how the fluid nature of the socio-cultural sphere affected the production of the original work as well as two of its most popular film adaptations. It looks at how the amount of power endowed upon the creator changes across time, and how these changes affect one another and create a rippling effect on the production of art. This paper thus concludes that the realization of the creator’s true vision for her work is in itself a product of a process of production that she set in motion herself.
Louisa May Alcott’s yearning to write literature that would do something important in the world was always at war with her desire to make money from it. Her father made barely any money, and the circumstances of her life made it impossible for her writing to be a purely artistic affair. Her first novel, Moods, was a book about a young woman who marries and later regrets it, and it was full of doubts about the institution of marriage, which is what reviewers at the time found “too free”, resulting in Alcott abandoning any desire to include those ideas in future works. There are other examples of Alcott’s works not being particularly well received because of her ideals, one of the more well-known events being the rejection of her stories by the Atlantic, presumably because of the inclusion of anti-slavery themes (Rioux, 2019, p.20). As a result, Alcott wrote lurid thrillers and sensation stories for cultural periodicals under a pseudonym, both before and after her career took off.
Little Women was born out of a request from the publisher Thomas Niles, asking Alcott to write a “girls’ book”, an idea she was not particularly wild about. In fact, she only changed her mind about the novel once she read the first proof and decided that the book was “simple and true”, and that was what was needed for young girls (Rioux, 2019, pp. 11-23). The book was soon published and became extremely popular, with readers writing dozens of letters to Alcott, with demands to know what would happen to the March girls, and to Alcott’s annoyance, who they would marry. Alcott desperately wanted the heroine, Jo, to transcend the norms set for women in society, but she had not considered the immense power an audience can hold, and while remaining adamant that Jo would not marry Laurie, the handsome boy next door, she was compelled by her publishers to marry all the girls off (Rioux, 2019, p.24). Alcott herself wrote in a letter to Alfred Whitman that the “sequel would make you laugh, especially the pairing off part”, indicating an almost smug amusement at her own decision to make Jo marry a forty-year-old German professor (as cited in Campbell, p.124).
Little Women and Cultural Production
According to Bourdieu, “the ideology of creation directs the gaze towards the ‘apparent producer’ of work and prevents the audience from asking questions about who created the creator and gave them this power of creation in the first place” (as cited in Hesmondhalgh, 2006, p.212). Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production does not just involve going beyond the individual creator to the wider network involved, nor does it mean reducing art to its social context; as David Hesmondhalgh puts it “Bourdieu offers instead a theory of cultural production based on his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital, and field” (2006, p.212). Bourdieu defines a field as “a separate social universe having its own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy” (1993, p.162), while habitus is any socio-cultural behaviour that is field-specific. The “fields” are organized around or by specific forms of capital. By identifying the key fields with respect to specific social spaces, one can study the interconnections between these different areas, and also look at the level of autonomy they have with respect to one another. Fields are constituted by struggles over positions within them, which usually take place between established producers and institutions, and disruptive newcomers (Hesmondhalgh, 2006, pp.215-216).
Applying Bourdieu’s theory to Little Women adds a new layer to the way the book is interpreted and looked at today. It is evident from Alcott’s personal correspondence as well as the book itself that not all the decisions made were products of the singular creator, but the product of interactions between different fields of production. The individual publisher may not reflect the demands of the entire industry, but their decisions about what is worth publishing do reflect what is in demand within the literary field. The publisher’s demands are informed by what is in vogue within the literary field, and the latter is shaped by the collective demands of different publishers. Little Women’s conception is thus not just the result of an individual choice to create, but one initiated by demands of the literary field and society. Little Women was a culturally produced work of art before it ever came into being.
Alcott’s power as a creator was endowed upon her as a result of interactions within the different fields of literature. This is best evidenced by the marriage of the daring and ambitious heroine, Jo March. Everyone was desperate for Jo to marry Laurie, her (incidentally rich) childhood best friend, that is, everyone except Alcott. Despite the failure of her first novel, Moods, Alcott still held to her views about marriage and would have liked to have seen Jo end up a literary spinster, much like herself, largely because in the 1860s it was near impossible for a woman to marry and continue creating art (Rioux, 2019, p.187). However, demands of the industry and societal norms dictated what she was and was not allowed to write, and to have her heroine end up a spinster would have spelt certain death for the book. The result was the character of Friedrich Bhaer, a kindly professor in his late thirties to early forties who was arguably almost the polar opposite of Laurie. The build up to Baer’s proposal to Jo is nothing like that of the events leading to her sister Meg’s marriage, or any of the other proposals in the book. It is decidedly not romantic, at least not in the vein of iconic literary proposals like that of Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813).
One may conclude that this is a result of Alcott being forced to marry off her characters, resulting in a section of the book that does not feel as real as the rest, but I would argue that this part of the novel is deliberately crafted as such. As can be seen from her letters, Alcott had this sense of smug amusement at her own writing decisions, especially the way that she pairs Jo off with a man. She writes,
Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare to refuse and out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect. (as cited in Campbell, 1994, p.124)
The lack of ‘real’ romantic build up is Alcott expressing her autonomy as an author because she wields the power conferred upon her in a way that conveys the meaning she originally wanted through the subtext. Although she never directly criticizes marriage, she does challenge its romanticization. Alcott rewrites the form of the sentimental novel, by keeping its promise of marriage but omitting any and all sexual or romantic appeal in the pairing, subverting the conventions of the form (Campbell, 1994, pp.125-126). Through her refusal to ‘justify’ Jo ending up with Bhaer she manages to draw one’s attention to the ridiculousness of the institution while also adhering to the boundaries set on her by the publishing industry.
What makes Little Women a text that has lasted, is the fact that the question of what the book is about is still hotly debated. Is it the story of a rebellious young woman whose ambition leads her to go beyond the norms and restrictions set by society, or is it the story of her slow assimilation to the status quo? (Rioux, 2019, p.164). Alcott exposes the boundaries set on her by existing power structures by engaging her audience but leaving them frustrated at the end. As Campbell writes, she calls attention to the genre’s limitations through her technical fulfilment of them while simultaneously resisting closure and in doing so, sets her own work apart from the rest (1994, p. 126). The tension between visions of feminism and the proponents of traditional family values are a product of the power structures that have shaped the book. However, it is not just a product of cultural production but has also shaped not just women’s literature, but also many individual writers and artists. Ursula K. Le Guin describes Jo March as “the original image of women writing” (Rioux, 2019, p.150), and says that Jo was a source of validation for her own ambitions. Susan Cheever, acclaimed memoirist, and Louise Rennison, author of the bestselling series The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson, have written introductions to the novel, detailing the enormous influence it had on young girls including themselves (Rioux, 2019, p.153).
As a book that celebrated the seemingly ordinary events of the everyday lives of women, the novel set in motion a new set of interactions within the literary field. It was revolutionary to have a narrator who spoke directly to an audience that primarily consisted of young girls who read the book, without correcting or preaching to them (Rioux, 2019, p.66). As Susan Cheever and many others have written, Alcott opened up a new way to write about women, making literature accessible and giving a voice to a previously silent section of the population (as cited in Rioux, 2019, p.153). Whether she intended to do so or not, her work became a blueprint for works like Susan Coolidge’s (the pen name for Sarah Woolsey) What Katy Did (1872) and L.M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) and paved a way for coming-of-age novels written about girls growing up in an ordinary world (Rioux, 2019, pp. 157-245). While Alcott’s work was not necessarily revolutionary, it was disruptive in that it offered a new way to tell stories about women. Alcott’s work also inspired numerous adaptations with more than four films based on the book, multiple miniseries, and even operas and an anime series. Each adaptation brings something new to the text, a new layer added by new habitus within the fields they are products of.
Adaptations and the Shifting Form of Little Women
Two of the most popular adaptations of Little Women are the films directed by Gillian Armstrong and Greta Gerwig, released in 1994 and 2019, respectively. Despite the shared form and content of these adaptations, they could not be more different from each other in how they recreate the text. One could even argue that they do not truly share form, at least not in terms of genre, because both films do not fit into the same category. Armstrong’s film was marketed as a family-oriented, nostalgic Christmas film. Although Gerwig’s film was also a Christmas release, it was never meant to be a purely nostalgic film. Amy Pascal, a producer on the film describes Gerwig’s original pitch:
The ambition and dreams you have as a girl get stomped out of you as you grow up. It was about the kinds of conversations that we all have about commerce and art and what we have to do to make things commercial. (Pascal, as quoted in Sandberg, 2019).
Armstrong’s film carries a tone of nostalgia, of idealized domesticity, of joint homes and families in a world where “broken homes” were becoming the norm. In the words of journalist Marshall Fine, she created a film that “manages to be traditional without being conservative” (Rioux, 2019, p. 130). Armstrong, as well as the screenwriter, Robin Swicord, were also wary about linking the film to feminism, which in the former’s words had received “irreparable amounts of bad press” (as cited in Rioux, 2019, p.131). The film included new and original dialogue, which served to make overt certain progressive ideas from the subtext, but in this process, the film loses a part of what made Alcott’s work emotionally compelling in the first place.
In Alcott’s novel, Marmee (the mother) is a stabilizing influence on the girls, but rather than being relegated to the role of the preacher, she is a fully fleshed out character who feels anger and despair and speaks to her children from her own experiences. The Marmee of the 1994 film, however, is the all-wise preacher who talks at, rather than converses with her children. This creative decision changed the tone of the film and made it come across as preachy, shifting it further away from the original work. The movie also does not show the audience as much of Jo’s struggles, and her resistance to the gender norms of the era, including the famous line where she declares that she wishes she had been born a boy, is absent. (Rioux, 2019, p. 134). One of the most powerful scenes in the book, where Jo and Marmee discuss her struggles to control her anger is entirely omitted. Although both Jo and Marmee have sections of the film’s proto-feminist dialogue, the films fails to take from Alcott’s text what was truly original and progressive —her criticism of marriage, the way children are educated into their gender, the challenges to the sentimentalization of motherhood — are all virtually non-existent.
These decisions seem odd at first, considering that the period it was made in was more progressive than the 1860s. However, when you look at the economic, political, and social fields, some of Armstrong’s decisions can be given more context. As Rioux writes, the 1990s were characterized by “culture-wars” in which “traditionalists and progressives argued over everything from science to the economy to art and women’s roles” (2019, p.130). Women felt uncomfortable calling themselves feminists, and conservatives argued for a return to “family values”. Armstrong was especially eager to convince men that there was something for them in the film too, and her aim was to appeal to all sections of the audience (Rioux, 2019, p.131). To include the criticism of marriage and gender norms from Alcott’s work would likely alienate a section of her audience, and the result is a work of art that is more of a family Christmas movie rather than a coming-of-age film.
Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of Little Women may share its source material with the 1994 film but the similarities end at that. Where Swicord’s writing dulls and omits some of Alcott’s powerful scenes, Gerwig adds to the intensity of the original, resulting in a film that captures what the novel could only say between the lines. The 2019 film tells the story through multiple timelines, shifting between the ‘present’ where the girls are grown, and the ‘past’, where the girls are still children. The timelines are differentiated by their colour - the past characterised by its warm-toned nostalgia, and the present consisting of colder, more bluish tones.
Laura Dern’s Marmee is full of life from her first scene, exuding motherly warmth, but also the chaos of someone who has flaws, of someone who is real. When Jo talks to her mother about her struggles to control her anger, Laura Dern’s Marmee and Alcott’s Marmee become one as she says to her daughter, “I am angry nearly every day of my life” and explains her own struggles to be patient when life encourages anything but.
Judith Fetterly, a literary scholar, wrote about what she felt were the darker undercurrents of Alcott’s children’s novel. She argues that while the overt message of the novel favours self-sacrifice on part of the women, the novel contains more subtle messages about the lack of real alternatives to marriage, especially for women (as cited in Rioux, p.180). Gerwig’s film embraces Alcott’s progressive portrayal of marriage, drawing from her other works to add layers to the original text. In a particularly poignant moment, Jo regrets turning down Laurie’s proposal, and Gerwig’s dialogue flows with emotional intensity, as Saoirse Ronan’s Jo exclaims,
I care more to be loved; I want to be loved. I just feel, like women, they have minds and souls as well as hearts, ambition and talent as well as beauty, and I’m so sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for. But… I’m so lonely! (2019, 1:42:25)
Gerwig’s work highlights the darker undertones that Fetterly talks about, by rewriting Alcott’s original dialogue to express the same kind of loneliness people experience even today. To be unmarried (and single) while more accepted and not at odds with being able to love, is still a lonely thing. Just as Jo watches her sisters find love and family, as one’s immediate circle moves on to that phase of their lives, one can feel the same kind of loneliness that Jo does in the 1860s.
Armstrong and Swicord’s film ends with Professor Bhaer proposing to Jo in the rain, followed by a kiss that echoes the classic romantic ending. Bhaer is also instrumental in the publishing of Jo’s own book, unlike the original text. Gerwig on the other hand takes Alcott’s frustrating ending and turns it on its head. Towards the end of the movie, it seems like Jo is about to marry Bhaer, chasing after him in the rain. However, at the pivotal moment, the film cuts to Jo sitting in a publisher’s office, negotiating an offer for her novel. Echoing Alcott’s life, she is pushed to marry her heroine off, but she retains the copyright to her novel. Following this is a parallel set of scenes. One echoing the novel, where a presumably married Jo runs a boys school with Bhaer, and the second being Gerwig’s own addition, a scene where Jo watches her book being printed and bound. The film switches between the two, with the former concluding with the entire family gathered to celebrate Marmee’s birthday, a scene coloured with the same warm nostalgia of the past. The film then switches to the colder tones of the present, with Jo holding her novel in her arms, quietly smiling before the screen cuts to black. Gerwig’s Bhaer is not instrumental in the publishing of Jo’s book, and her clever use of form suggests that Jo ended up unmarried, just as Alcott originally wanted.
Gerwig takes a culturally produced piece of work and integrates the habitus of the social and cultural fields of today, and continues the process of production, adding new meaning to the work through the power she has been endowed with, creating new boundaries that go beyond what Alcott had to work within.
Conclusion
The fields of production and the interactions within and between these fields evolve across time, and with that so do the boundaries of power endowed to different actors. Alcott was the heretical newcomer, and while her work was not particularly revolutionary, it was disruptive in that it offered a new way to tell stories about women. The autonomy of art and literature is not a transcendent and universal condition, and as Bourdieu writes, mass production is subject to heteronomy, but it is never entirely robbed of its autonomy either (Hesmondhalgh, 2006, p. 214). The more ‘radical’ views expressed in the subtext of Little Women are the product of the little autonomy that was left to the creator. Every adaptation of Little Women is a result of the evolving nature of artistic production, and the shifting levels of power and independence that creators are endowed with. Gerwig’s power as a creator was far beyond what Alcott ever had, and it is a product not just of a change within the artistic field, but within political and economic fields as well, a key one being the relatively higher degree of freedom and independence that women like Gerwig have in the 21st century. The process of cultural production evolved such that the author herself contributed to and helped set in motion the changes that allowed Gerwig to bring to life what I consider to be Alcott’s true vision for Little Women.
The Distribution of the Sensible in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Nicole Rothwell Guerra
HUM306: Watching Film & Television
Word Count: 2848
HUM306: Watching Film & Television
Word Count: 2848
Abstract
This essay provides a critical film review on The Grand Budapest Hotel directed by Wes Anderson. It holds as its central thesis that The Grand Budapest Hotel proves Ranciére’s concept of “distribution of the sensible”, where aesthetics allows director Wes Anderson, through the use of film techniques, to disrupt the senses of a western audience by presenting a refugee’s lived experience as a central theme, making visible the status of Eastern refugees in Western European countries. The film review contains a brief overview of Ranciére’s concept “distribution of the sensible” followed by concrete examples of the film techniques which disrupt the social order presented in the film and make visible refugees in Western Europe through the character of Zero Mustafa. The film review concludes that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a true aesthetic masterpiece in accordance with Ranciére, making it a truly educational film well worth watching.
If popular education is education that connects us with the lives and stories of everyday people and thereby can create bridges of understanding and solidarity, then films that represent those lives in rich detail and in a way that challenges viewers to think in new ways are vital educational tools. (Brown, 2011 p. 245)
The film The Grand Budapest Hotel, written and directed by Wes Anderson and based on the writing of Stephan Zweig, is an example of one such popular educational tool that allows its viewers to learn more about the societies we live in (Anderson, 2014). The Grand Budapest Hotel (TGBH) follows the story of concierge Gustave and lobby boy Zero Mustafa’s adventures after being framed for the murder of a noble women from the fictional Republic of Zubrowka in the 1930s (Anderson, 2014). Zubrowka is styled after long gone Eastern European empires, such as the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, or Soviet, and portrays Zubrowka’s decline into war and poverty (Scott, 2014). Throughout the film, many diagenetic and non-diagenetic elements are used to hint at the fictional Republic’s similarities to real life western culture. Of importance is the fact that concierge Gustave is an educated Western man, while Mustafa is a stateless boy from Eastern descent, with the stories happenstances connecting these two unlikely characters. Zero’s wife Agatha highlights the importance of their connection by the end of the film, when reciting in lyrical fashion “Whence came these two radiant, celestial brothers, untied for an instance as they crossed the stratosphere of our starry window. One from the East and one from the West.” (Anderson, 20141:29:00). The importance of these characters backgrounds and connection proves Rancière’s concept of “distribution of the sensible”, where aesthetics allows director Wes Anderson, through the use of film techniques, to disrupt the senses of a western audience by presenting a refugee’s lived experience as a central theme making visible the status of Eastern refugees in Western European countries. Due to its success within Western European audiences, with the majority of its global box office success deriving from audiences in UK and France, I assume that the movie was indeed targeted towards this specific audience in order to disrupt the conception of western social order (Beaumont-Thomas, 2014). To support my claim, I shall first provide a brief conception of Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible”. Then I shall turn to the film techniques used by Anderson to bring this concept to life in TGBH.
Distribution of the Sensible
Society and governments are dominated by a specific social order (Rancière, 2001, thesis 2). This social order determines what is recognized as correct or, in other words, what is shared between the individuals who are a part of the dominant group and the factors which determine which individuals can claim a part in this sharing. The distribution of the sensible is precisely this, it explains how time, spaces and forms of activities are distributed and which of these is visible, audible, thinkable or sayable by individuals who partake in a specific social order (Rancière, thesis 7). Furthermore, it determines who has the right and the capacity to speak and who will be listened to and take part in the sensations of society (Rancière, thesis 7). To give a concrete example, in minute 2:00 of TGBH, we are shown the author of the book which the movie appears to be based on (figure 1). The author is presenting us with information, speaking to us from a position of authority, making it clear that his voice must be listened to since he will be the narrator for the upcoming story (Barsam & Monaham, 2016).
Figure 1
What is interesting about the distribution of the sensible is not how it explains the current status quo but how it provides us with the tools and necessary knowledge to disrupt the social order enabling us to bring new voices into the existing social order (Rancière, 2001, Thesis 4). In minute 2:12, Anderson breaks away from the established distribution by making the sound of a door opening listenable which takes the attention away from the author’s voice. At 2:18, by using a pan-shot, Anderson brings into view a boy with a fake gun who shoots at the author, completely disrupting his speech. The pan-shot continues to follow the boy revealing a painter in the adjacent room at work. A reverse pan-shot then returns our view to the author where he continues with his narration. Although this scene lasts mere seconds, it has disrupted our senses and has brought our attention to characters that would normally not be given the space or screen time to participate in the creation of a story. Anderson’s main point of disruption occurs through the character of Zero Mustafa.
Figure 2
Film Techniques
In the first scene of the movie, as shown in figure 2, Anderson makes use of a nondiegetic element, screen text, to inform the audience about the setting of the story (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 154). The screen text establishes the eastern boundary of the European continent as the location of the story. This creates an expectation of a specific social order, one based on our knowledge of the social dynamics that have existed in Eastern European countries. This allows the narrator to march into the story without having to spend time explaining the social dynamics of the society presented, as we already have a vague idea of the functioning of this society, as our own society bares many resemblances to the one depicted on screen. Therefore, our ability to understand and connect with the storytelling is already unequally distributed between viewers, with western viewers having a higher ability to implicitly understand the social order presented.
Furthermore, it is established early on that the main protagonist of the story is Zero Moustafa. Although Anderson lures us into believing that Zero will play the role of sidekick for Monsieur Gustave, we know that it is an aged Zero who is retelling the story to the fictional author of the book TGBH. Furthermore, towards the end of the film an iris shot is used to emphasize the importance of Zero which frames him as the main protagonist as seen in figure 3 (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 351). Therefore, by slowly having Gustave hand Zero the role of protagonist of the story, Anderson fundamentally disrupts the hierarchy of visibility and knowledge that we have come to expect (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 124). This disruption occurs because, as a refugee with no family nor education, Zero would normally not be expected to participate, let alone actively participant, in a stereotypical western story, one based on the struggles for wealth of Eastern European nobility. yet throughout the film his struggles adapting to European society gain more and more importance, with Zero becoming the sole inheritor of the riches of a long-established noble family of Zubrowka. An occurrence that would not have seemed possible when the characters first set out on their adventures.
Figure 3
Another key scene that helps establish the importance Zero will have in the movie starts at minute 12:50. Up until now, Zero has only been a background character to the storyline, with the emphasis being placed on M. Gustave. Yet at this moment (figure 4), M. Gustave acknowledges the existence of Zero, which grants him the time and space to use his voice to introduce himself, disrupting our expectations and therefore our senses. Wes Anderson also makes strategic use of positionality to symbolize the the shift of Zero from a secondary to main character. As seen in figure 4, Zero first sticks to the left side of M. Gustave, showcasing that he has still not earned the trust or respect of the esteemed concierge. However, once Zero had proven his “worth”, Zero stands on M. Gustave’s right side, establishing himself as the right hand man of the Concierge and emphasizing the important role he will play during the rest of the film. Furthermore, Zero’s late introduction as a main character occurs quite late in the film, in this way Anderson built a certain expectation of whom the story would build upon, in this case an educated white male, only for this to be subverted so as to allow for a distribution of the sensible.
Figure 4
In opposition to Zero stands the western social order as the antagonist. According to Ranciére (2001, thesis 4), when a sense of belonging is created so is the sense of unbelonging. In TGBH, culture, wealth, and a history of nobility is used to measure individuals’ ability to belong in Zubrowka. As an “uncultured” orphaned boy of Eastern descent, Zero become part of this unbelonging. The audience is informed about this by the repetition of two nearly identical scenes that frame the beginning and end of Monsieur Gustave and Zero’s adventures which are the ID checks by the changing military forces of the Zubrowskian government. Here, the soldiers attempt to take Zero out of the story, away from the camera and deny him the right to participate and influence in the upcoming adventure. Had it not been for the intervention of Monsieur Gustave, Zero would have never participated in this story and no distribution of the sensible would have taken place. Instead, the violence that occurs in the everyday life of refugees takes place in front of the camera allowing the audience to feel and experience the injustices that are a part of Zero’s everyday life, for example acts of unbelonging and illegalization through border controls, racist remarks by natives of Zubrowka, and acts of violence enacted by both government officials and civilians (Fakhrashrafi et al, 2019).
Figure 5
A scene which showcases the director’s perception of a refugee’s life can be seen in figure 5. In this scene M. Gustave explains how he must act to become a perfect lobby boy: “A lobby boy is completely invisible yet always in sight. A lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy anticipates the clients needs before the needs are needed. A lobby boy is, above all, discreet to a fault.” (Anderson, 2014, 14.30) This definition applies to the role that Anderson assigns Zero in the movie, shot as a protagonist always in the center of the frame yet never the center of attention until the final focal shot shown in figure 2 (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 255). This can be further seen in figure 6. Zero can be found throughout the movie in frames within frames, showcasing the importance that he plays in this film. Yet, he is always with another main character, acting as an aid or supporting character to the other figure. In the shot where M. Gustave compares himself to boy with apple, Anderson brings Zero’s face into the shot using a mirror, which allows for the audience to see Zero’s reaction to moments where we normally wouldn’t be able to see Zero’s reaction. Therefore, although Zero is never the center of attention, Anderson always makes sure he is in sight, discretely partaking and shaping the story. In this way, an otherwise entirely western scene is disrupted by the continual addition of a refugee’s experience.
Figure 6
The technique which most strongly proves the claim of this analysis is Anderson’s use of both realistic and fantastic design styles (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 188). Throughout the entirety of the movie, the story is shot in vibrant colors and textures making the TGBH feel like a fantastical and exhilarating story about adventure, love, and fortune. The way that the characters’ faces are constantly lit up and accentuated adds a non-realistic feel to the movie that allows for the director to present tragic events in a lighthearted and fun manner. A clear example is portrayed in figure 7. The gunshot scene where Dmitri is seen shooting Monsieur Gustave and Zero has a pink filter which matches Mendel’s car from where the scene starts from. This coloring of the inside of the Grand Budapest Hotel feels more prominent than earlier takes of the Hotel. Furthermore, Dmitri stands underneath a chandelier and M. Gustave and Zero stand inside an elevator shaft with bright lights which emphasizes the importance of these three figures in this scene. Finally, the director makes use of a pan shot to switch from one character to another, further amplifying the fantastical feeling of the story. This fantastic design style pulls us into the story, bringing to life what an Eastern European society may have felt and looked like in all its glamor and flamboyance. Furthermore, it emphasizes its fictionality, making us feel comfortable to laugh and enjoy the narration as if where only another fairytale of a time long gone and no longer relevant to our modern day struggles.
Figure 7
On the other hand, Anderson makes use of a realistic design style at two crucial moments in the movie. The first moment is the scene where Zero reveals his life story to M. Gustave after he has escaped prison as seen in figure 8. In this scene, the protagonists are no longer using flamboyant clothes nor extravagant colors. The scene also uses less lighting than the rest of the movie, albeit the streetlight at the center of the shot still provides an unrealistic feel to the scene. Yet, by changing design style, Anderson gives a heavier degree of importance and solemnity to the message and story which Zero is conveying, disrupting the social order that had been established throughout the prior scenes of the movie. This scene reminds the audience of the harsh reality refugees faced and continue to face in our own societies. While Gustave’s anger portrays the stereotypical opinions in which “cultured” Europeans view immigrants such as Zero, Zero’s candid and calm answer refutes the ridiculousness of these stereotypes. Furthermore, Gustave’s seemingly sincere apology allows for the audience to further sympathize with Zero and, in this way, disrupt our definition of whom should and shouldn’t belong in western society.
Figure 8
This is also done in the closing scene of Zero and M. Gustave’s adventures when Anderson uses a black and white design style. In figure 9, all extravaganzas are gone, creating a dark and foreboding atmosphere. The camera no longer dances from character to character with the same ease as the rest of the film and the soldiers which enter the train compartment portray a more accurate depiction of soldiers as would be expected by the audience in a society which is teetering towards war. In this moment, all playfulness and fantasy has left the movie, forcing the audience to experience the full gravity of what it means to be a stateless individual in a western country. Not only is the social order disrupted but it is broken altogether.
Figure 9
Throughout the film, Anderson attempts to create a perceptual subjectivity in his storytelling to convey the message that what is being viewed is an accurate depiction of the lived experiences of a refugee in Europe (Barsam & Monaham, 2016, p. 256). Nevertheless, the fact that the director and screenwriter is a white male, that the movie is based on the books of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, and that the writer in the world of the story is also a white European male creates a sense of uncertainty of whether what is portrayed as the perspective of refugees is true. As Bonner (2013, p. 93) describes, natural history documentaries are framed by male directors and screenwriters who replicate patriarchal and masculinist societal constructs onto subjects that do not obey the rules of these constructs. Her critique of masculine POV is also valid in relation to TGBH. Although the story concludes with Zero Mustafa as the protagonist and visibleness the experience of refugees in a film where their depiction is not only unexpected by normally actively excluded, we must also consider that Mustafa is still framed by “The Author” of the Grand Budapest Hotel, a white middle class European male of the 1960s and by Wes Anderson himself, an American male director of the 21st century. Bonner’s critique is therefore very relevant in terms of the Grand Budapest hotel for it is only through these masculine POV that Zero Mustafa has been given the space to enter the visible. Therefore, we should take into close consideration whether TGBH is disrupting the social order with accurate experiences felt by refugees or if it is presenting an idyllic version that is easier for western-centric and patriarchical audiences to digest.
Conclusion
By using a varying array of narration, mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing techniques director Wes Anderson was able to create a powerful film where a multitude of implicit messages lie underneath the superficial eccentricity of his design style. By using these techniques to create a space for the refugee’s voice and experiences in a film that originally lures us to perceive it as nothing more than a fantastical depiction of Eastern European society in the 1930’s, Anderson manages to partake in the distribution of the senses as theorized by Ranciere. In this manner, The Grand Budapest Hotel becomes an aesthetic masterpiece well worth watching.
A Game-Theoretic Exploration of the Bystander Effect
Niene Tempelman, Hester van der Weij, & Evelien van Meeteren
ECB210: Applied Game Theory
Word Count: 2645
ECB210: Applied Game Theory
Word Count: 2645
Abstract
The murder of Catherine Genovese is the most well-known case of the bystander effect. The bystander effect suggests that the more bystanders witness an emergency, the smaller the chance that someone intervenes. This study will try to conceptualize the bystander effect by using game theory. By illustrating the cost of helping as the effect of the number of people who are present to a person’s payoff and thus to his strategy, this paper will try to explain the intricacies of the bystander effect. Furthermore, the two solutions most often mentioned in the literature, namely social rewards and punishments, are explored. The results indicate that when the number of people increases, the possibility of people helping decreases, however, this progress is significantly—and similarly—slowed by the introduction of rewards and punishments. Therefore, social rewards and punishments are possible solutions to the bystander effect that should be further explored.
The lack of help, in this case, can be explained by the bystander effect. The bystander effect suggests that the more bystanders witness an emergency, the smaller the chance that someone intervenes (Darley & Latané, 1968). In order to prevent situations where the bystander effect plays a part, solutions to the bystander effect should be tested and implemented. This paper will try to conceptualize the bystander effect by using game theory. This will be done by illustrating how the number of people present influences the cost of helping and the helpers payoff and thus his strategy. Therefore, our research question is: ‘How can game theory explain the bystander effect and how can it give insights to possible solutions?’
This paper will answer this question by first assessing the bystander effect in more detail, then explaining how a social psychological problem can be converted into a game-theoretic problem. Then the bystander effect will be examined through game-theoretic analysis to see if it is possible to mathematically explain this phenomenon. Furthermore, possible solutions of the bystander effect, such as rewards and punishments, will be investigated. I will finish by discussing the limitations and feasibility of using game theory to explain a complex social psychological phenomenon such as the bystander effect.
Literature Review
The bystander effect refers to the tendency of people to be less likely to help an individual in trouble when more people are present. This is explained by the principle of diffusion of responsibility, meaning that responsibility to help is divided and diluted between each witness, thereby decreasing the pressure for each individual to intervene (Thomas et al., 2016). Additionally, there are two other motives preventing people from helping. Firstly, there is “audience inhibition”, which is the fear that the situation transpires not to be an emergency, thus intervening would lead to embarrassment. Secondly, there is “social influence”, where witnesses screen the inaction of others and see this as cues to not intervene (Latané & Nida, 1981).
The predicament witnesses find themselves in can be explained as a social dilemma. Usually, a social dilemma is characterised by a dominant strategy and the resulting pure strategy Nash Equilibrium (NE), is a deficient equilibrium (Dawes, 1973). A dominant strategy is the strategy which is optimal for the player regardless of what the other player chooses. A NE is present when no player - after choosing their strategy - can enhance their expected payoff by altering their strategy when the other players do not change their strategy. A pure strategy NE occurs when the dominant strategy is chosen for sure, and not on a probability distribution. To overcome this social dilemma and attain a more efficient outcome, individuals must cooperate instead of playing their dominant strategy.
However, in the case of Catherine Genovese, there is no dominant strategy, resulting in two mixed strategy Nash equilibria, meaning a negative coordination where one of the players sacrifices themselves is needed. As Diekmann (1985) described, this is caused by the incentive for “free-riding” of someone else helping being bigger than the incentive to increase the collective good by helping the victim at the cost of the volunteer. However, if no one intervenes, all players lose. This is explained as the Volunteer’s Dilemma (VD), leading to the bystander effect.
As this social dilemma can be presented in a strategic way, game theory can help explain the tendency that when more people are present the probability of intervention decreases. Furthermore, game theory will help to give insights into the effects of introducing punishments and/or rewards into the payoff structure and if these changes result in increased incentive to overcome the bystander effect.
Rewards and punishments can be proposed as a solution for this social dilemma, as they are ways to make acting more attractive or not acting less attractive (van Lange, Rockenbach & Yamagishi, 2014). Although laws regarding people’s duty to help in life-threatening situations do exist, for instance, in the Netherlands, usually these laws only apply in some rare cases and there are not many known cases of people actually being punished for their lack of action (Art. 450 Wetboek van Strafrecht, 1984). Rewards and punishments can be both tangible and intangible, meaning that a reward can, for example, be in the form of money or in the form of positive media attention. Similarly, a punishment could be a fine or negative media attention. Many researchers have claimed that intangible rewards and punishments can be effective in societies with strong social norms regarding helping others, which is the case in more collectivist countries such as China and Japan (Chekroun & Brauer, 2002).
Game-Theoretic Analysis
The elements of the game-theoretic model include players, actions, information structure, payoffs, and the rules of the game. In order to model the bystander effect, n players are needed. The actions for the player i include act or not act. For the player(s) n-i, the actions are either not acting, or at least one person acting. The letter n refers to the number of people playing the game. So if there are two players in the game, n-i is only one player, but if there are three players, n-i will be two players and so on. The information structure consists of imperfect information, as the strategy of n-i is not observable for i, and vice-versa. The payoffs for the players include the value of the life of the person in need (v) and the cost of acting (c), where v > c, because when no-one acts, person i prefers to act. When player i acts and player n-i does not act, the payoff will be v-c for player i and v for player(s) n-i. respectively, and when players i and n-i do not act, payoffs will be 0 for all players. As the game is symmetric, the payoffs are similar for players i and n-i. The rules of the game specify that it is a simultaneous, non-cooperative game that is played once with v-c > 0, meaning if no-one acts, i prefers to act, and v > v-c, meaning if at least one person acts, i prefers to not act.
Figure 1
The strategic form of the game with n players
In our game, there are two asymmetric pure-strategy NE, meaning that for each situation a player prefers a different action (illustrated by Figure 1). If player i chooses to act, players n-i will choose not to act and when player i chooses not to act, players n-i will choose to act. Therefore, there is no dominant strategy as the optimal choice depends on the actions of the other player. This coordination problem makes it impossible to determine at which NE the players will end up. Therefore, a mixed strategy NE, which stipulates the probability that will explain which NE the players will find themselves, is proposed. A mixed strategy NE thus means that one player uses a random strategy and no player can raise their expected payoff by using an alternate strategy. In this case, the mixed strategy NE will entail the probability of person i choosing to act, where p is the probability of acting and 1-p probability of not acting (Diekmann, 1985). In our analysis, we will first theorise the game of a VD in a strategic form with n = 2 players to analyse the dynamics of the VD (see Appendix A). The probability of person 1 acting is p = (v-c)/v where p ∈ [0,1] (see Appendix B). This means that the higher the value of v (ceteris paribus), the higher the probability of acting. Furthermore, the higher the value of c (ceteris paribus), the lower the probability of acting. However, an increase in c has more effect on the probability of someone helping than the same increase in v. Thus, the incentive of helping depends for n = 2 more on the cost of helping than the value of someone’s life. Nevertheless, the n = 2 game does not depend on the number of bystanders, and is thus not representative of the bystander effect, as this game only depends on the values of v and c.
Therefore, we introduce a game with n-i players. The strategic form shows two NE for act and not act, and not act and at least one person acts (See Appendix C). Therefore, the mixed strategy NE has to be constituted from the joint probabilities of all players. This will mean the joint probabilities (1-p)n-1 for players n-i not acting and 1-(1-p)n-1 for at least one person of n-i acting (See Appendix D). This allows for the following mixed NE to be derived; the probability of a person i acting is p = 1-(c/v)1/n-1 where p ∈ [0,1] (see Appendix E). The graph below illustrates the effect of the increase in n on different values for v and c (see Figure 2 and Appendix F).
Figure 2
Probability of Acting in Correlation to the Numbers of Players
The graph shows that with an increase in n (the number of players), the probability of a person i acting decreases. The graph also shows that when the payoff of person i acting, namely v-c, decreases (from 3 to 2), the probability of person i acting decreases. Even with different values and ratios for c and v, the probability still decreases when there is an increase in n. Therefore, the bystander effect is clearly shown.
The Effects of a Criminal Record
As mentioned in the literature review, in the Netherlands there are laws punishing people with entries into their criminal record if they fail to act in an emergency situation. Therefore, the payoff structure is altered by adding the consequences of a criminal record r when a person does not act, where r<c. Although the pure strategy NE stays similar (See Appendix G), the mixed strategy NE changes. The mixed strategy NE proposes that the probability of a person i acting is p = 1-((c-r)/v)1/n-1 where p∈[0,1] (see Appendix H). The graph below depicts the influence of a criminal record on the probability of helping (see Figure 3). Figure 3
Probability of Acting in Correlation to the Numbers of Players with the Cost of a Criminal Record
Unfortunately, the graph depicts that even though a punishment increases the probability of someone acting, it does not cancel out the bystander effect (see Appendix I).
The Effects of a Reward
As mentioned in the literature review, a reward can also be offered if a person acts in an emergency situation. Therefore, the payoff structure is altered by adding the benefits of a reward b when a person does act, where b<c. Again, the pure strategy NE stays similar (see Appendix J), but the mixed strategy NE changes. The mixed strategy NE proposes that the probability of a person i acting is p=1-((c-b)/v)1/n-1 where p∈[0,1] (see Appendix K). The graph below depicts the influence of rewards on the probability of helping (see Figure 4). Figure 4
Probability of Acting in Correlation to the Numbers of Players with the Benefit of a Reward
Unfortunately, the graph depicts that even though a reward increases the probability of someone acting, it does not prevent the bystander effect (see Appendix L). Although the payoffs of the punishment and rewards are placed on not acting and acting respectively, the mixed NE stays the same. This leads to the conclusion that the effects of the bystander effect are indifferent between rewards and punishment. Additionally, a (increase in) punishment/reward still increases the probability of acting. Therefore, these laws should stay in place and research into other solutions to the bystander effect should be conducted.
Lastly, we will use our model to explain the real-life example of Catherine Genovese.
Figure 5
Probability of Acting in Correlation to the 37 Witnesses of the Catherine Genovese Case
The graph shows clearly that when there are 37 people witnessing an emergency, the probability of someone acting approaches 0 (see Figure 5). Even if punishments and rewards had been in place to prevent the bystander effect, the probability of someone acting as predicted by our model approaches 0.
Conclusion
Through the use of game theory, this paper has analysed the bystander effect and has given insights on the choice situations among the players. It has provided a mathematical understanding to complement the psychological side on why people are less inclined to help others when more people are present. Nonetheless, this research is not without limitations. By using the standardized n for the number of players, individual differences, such as different tendencies towards altruistic behaviour, are disregarded. These differences can either be because of inherited characteristics or because of cultural differences, e.g. growing up in an individualistic or collectivistic society. For example, rewards and punishments will have a bigger effect on reducing the bystander effect in collectivistic societies compared to individualistic societies (Leung & Bond, 1984). Further research on the bystander effect should therefore focus on differences in altruism, by either creating a game in which chance determines whether a bystander is altruistic or not altruistic and solve this VD with the Bayesian NE solution concept, or by letting the researchers choose the number of altruistic players.
Additionally, since this paper is neither an economic nor a criminological paper, it is limited in assigning feasible values to the rewards and punishment introduced in the game, making it difficult to apply the formula to real-life situations. For example, what constitutes a punishment and what value do we give that respective punishment? Furthermore, the probability for rewards and punishments were based on b < c and r < c respectively. However, this meant that it was impossible to look at the effects of b and r being higher than the cost of helping. As the mixed strategy NE is not suited for this problem, further research should use other solution concepts. Another controversial but noteworthy point is that the bystander effect, and explicitly the case of Catherine Genovese, are according to some portrayed much more dramatic than it actually was. Catherine’s brother claimed that some witnesses did try to help her and that there were not 37 eyewitnesses but only six, of which only two people saw the attack (Jancelewicz, 2016). This perspective indicates that more research on the concept of the bystander effect itself is needed. Modelling game theory cannot always predict real-life situations, since it includes many simplifications.