Archives: November 2014

Phobia in Practice – A Case Study at a First Year Residence Orientation

At the beginning of the school term, I attended an orientation event at the Place Vanier first-year residence where one of my old high school acquaintances, Steven, was staying. This was a casual meet-and-greet organized by the local residents association, intended to allow new residents of each pair of “sister” houses to get to know each other. The particular pair of houses that my friend was a part of were gender segregated, where he and his all-male house was matched with another all-female house. In many ways, this was a typical introductory event – it was held outdoors in fair weather, background music was playing, and some complimentary beverages were provided by the residents association. Yet its workaday appearance in no way made it exempt from being a site for the enactment of a plethora of social patterns and scripts. In a conversation I had with a group of four male first-year students, I witnessed firsthand two interrelated patterns of socialization that were employed as a topic of conversation and as a bonding tool – compulsory heterosexuality and sexual essentialism.

In order to make sense of some of my observations and explain these two concepts, I will be drawing upon chapter four of Mariana Valverde’s Sex, Power and Pleasure. Here, she explains her ideas on how the “cultural myth” of sexual essentialism obstructs our understanding of the fluidity of sexual identities and the existence of bisexuality (111). She also gives an overview of Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality (114). These will form the conceptual backbone for my interpretation of my experience conversing with the four young men. Incidentally, these students were all fluent in English, having spent most if not all of their lives either in Canada or the United States. Three of them appeared to be Caucasian and the one that appeared to be Asian identified as an ethnic Korean. My analysis, based on notes that I took after attending this orientation, will be focused on how the micro-interaction that occurred was a specific expression of the constructs that Valverde and Rich identify as well as an illustration of how their theories are interrelated. I suggest that these theorists allow us to see the short conversation that I witnessed as a microcosmic part of wider patterns that circulate throughout society.

The interaction that is the subject of this blogpost began after we had all introduced ourselves and engaged in quite a bit of small talk regarding our backgrounds, faculties, and interests. During a momentary lull in the conversation, Stan (all the names used in this post are pseudonyms), one of the Caucasian students, asked the group whether we had “[liked] what we had seen so far” accompanied by a suggestive smirk. When the rest of the group answered in a generally noncommittal fashion, he followed up by saying, “Oh come on, you can’t tell me you guys don’t think she’s hot”, gesturing surreptitiously to a girl nearby. Jokingly, he added, “I mean, you’d have to be dead.” While this elicited tentative expressions of approval from the other guys in the group, I responded truthfully that I disagreed and that I was “not straight.” At this, Stan replied, “Oh well, if you’re gay, that’s different.”

While this was a short, casual piece of conversation – it took less than a minute and the subject was not brought up again – it is a great example of how individual, seemingly insignificant interactions are informed by social patterns. Stan’s comments on the attractiveness of the girls of the residence sister-house are informed by his partial understanding of the social structure that Rich identifies as “compulsory heterosexuality”. As Valverde explains, this concept describes how society presents heterosexuality “as the norm”, as a universal experience shared by everybody except for those labeled and punished as deviants (114). The social forces that make heterosexuality compulsory also make it appear “natural” (114). When Stan asked us whether we found any of the girls at the event attractive, he was relying upon the implicit assumption that as “naturally” heterosexual young men, we were bound to do so. When our response did not “live up” to this premise, he appealed further to social norms by referring to a stereotypically good-looking (from a heterosexual perspective) female student. By adding that we would “have to be dead” to disagree, Stan continued to draw upon his partial understanding of compulsory heterosexuality by implying that as young men, we had no choice but to be allured by an archetypal example of the heterosexist standard of female beauty.

Interestingly enough, despite my expressed deviance from compulsory heterosexuality in my refusal to deem the girl in question as attractive and my identification as “not straight”, I was not socially “punished” in the classic sense (114). This is most likely due to the increasing social and institutional acceptance of homosexuality that has occurred in Canada and more generally amongst Western countries since Rich wrote in 1980. Still, I was positioned as outside “the norm” by Stan (“that’s different”) and as such subject to a minor degree of social awkwardness (judging by his expression and those of the others in the group). However, perhaps the most interesting part of his statement was his assumption that I am gay. In fact, based on the information that I provided (“I’m not straight”), the only logical conclusion that he could infer would be only that I am not heterosexual. His assumption that I could only be one of two sexualities – homo- or heterosexual – draws from another social pattern that is identified by Valverde as the cultural myth of “sexual essentialism” (117). This is assumption that, barring extremely rare exceptions, “everyone is “really”… either gay or straight” (111). As Valverde explains, this myth supposed “that we all have some inner core of sexual truth” which pre-determines our sexualities and precludes the possibility of fluidity and change (111). Ergo, given that I was not straight, sexual essentialism dictated that I must be gay.

Of course, in reality, there exists considerable fluidity in people’s lived experiences of sexuality, particularly amongst women (112). What is important to realize is that Stan’s reproduction of sexual essentialism has social consequences in that it participates in an erasure of actual sexual fluidity. Attitudes and actions informed by sexual essentialism make it difficult for fluid sexual identities (such as pansexuality, bisexuality, uncategorized sexual identities, etc.) to be recognized, understood, and accepted. Similarly, his heterosexist comments participate in an erasure of non-heterosexual identities. Resisting these conformist tendencies means that we have to recognize that even small, seemingly insignificant actions and words can contribute to discrimination. My goal for this post is not to simply illuminate an academically interesting relationship between theory and reality – it is to raise more awareness of the subtle ways in which inequality can function. Next time you encounter a situation that seems to make you or others uncomfortable, ask yourself if any sort of implicit discrimination may be occurring. Only by interrogating our common sense assumptions can we rid ourselves of inequality as a society.

References:

Valverde, Mariana. Sex, power and pleasure. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1985.
Weblink: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4315933

 

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Kant, Marcuse, and the One-Dimensional Society – Reflections on UBC Sauder School of Business’s Imagine Day Orientation

In “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’”, philosopher Immanuel Kant sets out his ideas on the nature of enlightenment and the state of affairs that would allow it to take place.  Kant defines enlightenment as people gaining the ability “to use [their] own understanding without the guidance of another” (Kant 1784/1970: 54) and argues that its occurrence in society is “almost inevitable” as long as citizens are allowed the freedom to make “public use of [their] own reason” (Kant 1784/1970:: 55). Through the constant exercise of this freedom, he postulates that humanity’s “original destiny” (Kant 1784/1970: 57) of “upward progress” (Kant 1784/1970: 58) will continuously be achieved. However, in his discussion of the conditions necessary for intellectual freedom, Kant does not adequately address the limitations which systems of societal oppression can impose on critical understanding. As Herbert Marcuse argues, modern industrial civilization makes individuals discursively dependent on itself through a “manipulation of needs” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 406). This idea is problematic for Kant’s notion that the freedom of “public reason” will lead to enlightened progress because it demonstrates how society can exert a conforming influence upon reason at the level of language, resulting in a world where an individual’s ability to think freely is restricted.

In this blog-post, I will analyze observations that I made at UBC’s Imagine Day orientation event at the Sauder School of Business, where first year students were led on guided tours of the university by upper-year business student mentors. I will show how the patterns of interaction and communication between the students and their student leaders illustrate the implicit critique that Marcuse brings to Kant’s notion that the freedom of “public reason” will lead to enlightened progress.

Kant describes the freedom to the “public use of reason” as the right to openly criticize any societal policies, arrangements, or beliefs. The presence of this freedom will guarantee enlightenment because, according to him, progress revolves around a society’s capacity to continuously “extend and correct its knowledge” ” (Kant 1784/1970: 57). In essence, Kant asserts that enlightenment lies in the constant revision of the status quo and the realization that no aspect of society is incapable of being improved upon by “higher insight” (Kant 1784/1970: 57). Thus, Kant’s argument hinges on citizens possessing the ability to “think freely” (Kant 1784/1970: 59) enough to come up with effective critiques of the established social order. For Kant, the only necessary condition for this to occur is that the act of “addressing the entire reading public” (Kant 1784/1970: 55) with ones ideas be made permissible (i.e. that coercive violence, laws against the freedom of speech, political pressure, etc are absent). He assumes that without explicit institutional pressure, the public use of reason will become sufficiently autonomous to produce ideas that result in the progressive revision of social arrangements. It is here that Kant overlooks the role of systemic oppression in shaping the language use upon which the “public use of reason” depends. Specifically, oppressive social arrangements restrict the ability of individuals to think independently, calling in to question Kant’s claim that the freedom to make “public use of reason” is all that is necessary for enlightenment.

Marcuse’s criticism of modern society illustrates how individuals are made discursively dependent upon the status quo. In an essay from One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse describes the paradox of the “advanced industrial civilization” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 405) in which we live. “Freedom from want” and the individual’s liberation from the “alien needs and alien possibilities” imposed by labour are within reach of society, yet the very “apparatus” that has made this possible continues to impose its “economic and political requirements… on labor time and free time, on the material and intellectual culture” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 406). This imposition creates what Marcuse calls a “totalitarian” society through the “manipulation of needs by vested interests” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 406), which unites groups with originally distinct social aims under “the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 408). On an ideological level, this unification “precludes the emergence of an effective opposition against the whole” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 406) by creating a “pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour” in which challenges to the system are inevitably “repelled or reduced” to the terms of “the established universe of discourse” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 410).

Marcuse’s conceptualization of a one-dimensionality of society poses a clear problem for Kant’s thesis that freedom for the “public use of reason” is sufficient to achieve progress because it asserts that such “freedom” fails to produce critical assessments which transcend the discourse of the society in which it is created. As long as individuals are dependent on manipulated needs, their capacity for criticism remains reliant on the assumptions of the society that they are trying to assess, foreclosing the possibility of their formulating a critique which challenges the status quo in a substantial manner. To illustrate how social groups come to depend upon these manufactured “needs”, we will return to the UBC Sauder School of Business’s orientation event.

Here, first-year business majors are being socialized into their role as “Sauder students”. In my observation of multiple student groups, I noticed that the upper-year student mentors all led with the same “philosophy”, in which they would imagine a hypothetical, idealized first-year Sauder student and try to communicate this identity to the newcomers. This could be seen in the kinds of information that they would give, ranging from insider tips on what professors would expect from the dreaded essay assignments and going to office hours to “try and get to know them on a personal basis” to recommendations for utilizing career advice clinics and getting assigned readings done on a timely basis. The common theme of all this information is that it is geared towards producing a certain kind of “successful” Sauder student – one that is hard-working, makes full use of university resources, and adept at obtaining good grades. Note that the emphasis is not on whether this is a “realistic” portrayal of the majority of Sauder students – certainly, if reports from professors and current students are to be believed, very few people go to office hours, almost no one uses the career advice clinics, and readings are done the week before the scheduled exam. Nor is the focus on producing intellectual excellence – the tips on essays, readings, and office hours are intended to help newcomers achieve good, or at least passing, grades.

This information conveyed by the student leaders and eagerly consumed by the first-years illustrates Marcuse’s point on how society creates conforming groups of “one-dimensional” people through the “manipulation of needs by vested interests” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 406), uniting people under “the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment” (Marcuse 1964/2012: 408). In this case, the “Establishment” is the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, which desires the creation of a student body which will produce decent marks and maintain the good image of the institution. In order to do this, it manipulates the material needs of its students by controlling the grading system and the conferral of privileged credentials (the Degree). Of course, it is a “common-sense” understanding that in order to obtain good employment to provide for oneself and one’s future life goals, a student must obtain these credentials. Through various institutional structures (i.e., grading rubrics, department guidelines, university policy, etc.) and the resulting implicit understanding acquired by students, a conformist student population is created with material needs (eventual employment) that are oriented towards the goals of the Establishment (good PR). This “one-dimensional” student identity is then introduced to successive generations of new students through orientations events like Imagine Day.

Note that there is no explicit restriction on going against the grain (no one can stop you from failing if you wanted to). However, despite the “freedom” of speech and argument that we enjoy as university students, most of us will perform what is required by the “Establishment” in order to fulfil our material life goals and satisfactions. Those who do not will in the majority of cases be consigned to a fate of low income and social status. This situation demonstrates perfectly Marcuse’s argument that institutional manipulation of individual needs creates conformist groups with patterns of “one-dimensional thought and behaviour” that precludes any effective opposition against the established institution.

 

Kant, Immanuel (1784/1970) “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” In H. Reiss. Kant’s Political Writings. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 54-59.

URL: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/What_is_Enlightenment.pdf

Marcuse, Herbert (1964/2012) “From One-Dimensional Man.” In Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles. Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Pine Forge Press. Pp. 405-412.

URL: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/one-dimensional-man.pdf

 

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The Interconnection between the Self and Society: My Experience at an Orientation Event

In September, I attended an orientation/ ice breaker event hosted by one of the largest social clubs in UBC. Prior to entrance, I had a stereotypical notion of the club as being composed mainly of a certain ethnic group with a certain outgoing behaviour. I could tell I was anxious and hesitant of my interaction with the group as I found myself constantly delaying my entrance, despite the friendly welcome from the executives. Hiding in the washroom for a few minutes, I convinced myself to enjoy the event and stepped outside. Thankfully, I encountered some of my classmates at the door who encouraged me to go in and participate in the activity. As we entered the lecture room, we immediately gathered together and talked about how awkward we felt at the event and how we did not seem to belong. It was not until we were separated by group leaders to our stationed groups that our conversation ended.

The event preceded with the hosts’ introduction of the club and some ice breaker activities. In the middle of an ice breaker activity, my classmate and I decided to leave the event as we felt uneasy in the group. Once we exited the event and walked toward the bus loop, we asked eachother the reasons to our anxiety within the group. For me, ethnicity was an issue because I did not classify myself as a member of the ethnic group representing the club. For my classmate, dress code was an issue as she felt she had not dressed appropriately to the standard of the group. For both of us, age was an issue because we felt too old to be involved in orientations, mainly held to recruit freshmen and newcomers to the club. This was a surprising investigation as both of us were completely unaware of eachother’s concerns of feeling different, nor were we discriminated by the members of the club. It was our own evaluation of ourselves, based on our presumptions of who or what is appropriate for the group, that placed a judgment on our belonging in the group. It was a personal trouble, according to C. Wright Mills, a trouble “occur[ing] within the character of the individual and within the range of his or her immediate relations with others,” a private matter. After realizing this, we decided to go back to the club and enjoy the rest of the event.  However, it was clear that our personal troubles had a connection with how we were socialized by society. From micro socializations such as forming lunch groups in school and intaking values taught by our parents to macro socializations such as historical values imposed by our culture and new values imposed by the media, we are socialized to identify ourselves in a certain way and expected to interact within a certain group. Therefore, we feel comfortable in partaking certain identities and groups, while it is difficult for us to interact with other groups, especially structured organizations such as clubs, without preconceived notions. The confined boundaries of relationships and identities held by individuals thus becomes a public issue; as Mills states that it occurs when “some values cherished by publics is felt to be threatened.. form[ed by a] larger structure of social and historical life.” On a broader level, this confinement leads to racism, classism, sexism, etc.

The social club I attended attempted to tackle this public issue by opening the club to a diversity of people to break preconceived notions of the club and to provide an inclusive space for all students in UBC. This was evident through their announcements in introducing their club, representation of executives (including one of the hosts and our team leader) of a different ethnic group than the majority makeup of the club. Everyone spoke in English, providing an inclusive space for people who did not speak the language of the group but spoke English. Dress code was not imposed and stationed groups were organized according to a random selection of alphabets. Individual choices for engaging/disengaging in activities were respected and everyone was encouraged to be themselves while still being accepted. However, despite the club’s efforts and claims to provide an inclusive space for all students, the type of clothing worn by executives and the series of sexually provocative cheers and games visualized an identity of the group in a certain way which portrayed an imagined community of who belongs and composes the group, affecting the ratio of students who ultimately decide to join the club.

Furthermore, by the dress code and attitude of the executives in leading activities during the orientation, social standards of executive behaviour are set and place limits on individuals when applying for executive positions, as they would have to prove themselves to be outgoing, to posess leadership qualities, to be able to laugh at and promote activities underlying stereotypical sexual and masculine/feminine orientations, and to be, or at least embrace, the culture of the dominant ethnic group. This is similar to how new fraternity boys had to prove themselves according to certain standards placed by senior fraternity boys, which emphasized the group’s definition of masculinity, during a rush event in Kimmel’s “Guyland.”

While at a broader surface level, the club seems very welcoming and inclusive to diversity, at a higher level of executive positions, there are more exclusive standards on behaviour and ideals; it is expected that a successful candidate would be able to conform to the group’s ideas and definitions in order to be accepted.

References:

Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Kimmel, M. (2008). Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.

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#IamUBC and Imagine Day

Dear UBC (past, future, and present) Students,

UBC is an incredible place- a “place of promise” as we see in some of UBC’s messages marketed to us. It provides us with an astounding number of opportunities to redefine, develop, and discover ourselves and turn students into productive, fully functioning members of society. I personally am very thankful to have had the opportunity to attain a rich and fulfilling education here at UBC and would not change my decision to attend UBC for my undergraduate degree. I’m not sure if I would have matured to the extent that I have at a different university than UBC. However, the purpose of this post is not to criticize or praise UBC as an institution of education, rather, I want to point out the importance of recognizing UBC as an institution not unlike many others that participate in our free-market system. Specifically, as with other major institutions, UBC profits off of (y)our identification with and participation in its reproduction, and this means that your reverence for the UBC brand is something this institution works very hard to maintain and survives from in ways far beyond what you might expect. In other words, your consumption of the UBC brand is a highly powerful act.

To explain using some theoretical approaches: let’s start with a Marxian concept. While people with little social science background might associate Marx with communism, he didn’t only talk about a utopian ideal, he was also really good at explaining how systems of power operate economically, but especially socially and politically. Specifically, Marx approaches power through the perspective of the social construct, meaning that power is simply a result of peoples’ thinking. As long as people attach certain values and meanings to symbols, power and control can not only be predicted, it can also be interrupted and changed.

A great quote that Marx uses to illustrate this is through his explanation of ideology in his famous piece called German Ideology: “Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc… Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.”

There is a lot to understand in this quote. Let’s break it down.

First, men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc… this is essentially what I was explaining earlier, that people (you can ignore the gendered language Marx was using, which was normal during his time) ultimately attach meanings to what they see in the world, which are usually informed by value systems other people, like your family and your friends, taught to them as “normal” and expected.

Second, ideology is a word that Marx uses to explain why different classes of people exist. Marx saw the world as consisting of two classes, proletariats (working class) and bourgeoisie (business owners or managers). For Marx, the working class people were exploited by the business owners and he understood this as the result of a collective problem whereby power of business owners was a product of a collective survival of working class people based on wages through work. He saw this as a gross imbalance of power and wanted to understand why this imbalance persisted to the extent that it did during his time.

Third, a camera obscura is one of the first devices developed for the recording of images, right around Marx’s time. It works by completely blocking all light from a room, with the exception of a very small hole. After enough time passes, you can sit in the room and after your eyes adjust, an image of the world becomes refracted onto the wall opposite the hole and this image is an exact upside-down replica of what you would see if you were to put your eye to the hole from inside the room and look out onto the world. This is in fact how cameras work today, and it is how you see the world, literally with your eyes. Since your eye works with a refracted image onto your retina, the image becomes re-oriented to the correct version by your brain, which is connected to your eye through various nerves. You can learn more about the camera obscura through this cool Youtube video.

But I digress. Marx is saying that as images appear upside down and distorted on your retina and in a camera obscura, ideology also distorts peoples’ images of the world. This is because of peoples’ historical life-processes, which basically means the way groups of people have historically come to organize themselves and economically sustain themselves.

So you’re probably asking yourself, how does all of this tie in to UBC?

UBC is an education institution, which means that it requires a relatively large number of students to want to go there for their education each year. Universities need to address a large number of needs today in order to stay competitive. Some of these include employment opportunities for students after graduation, development of research and critical thinking skills, and student clubs and societies so that students get bored on campus. All of these will ultimately involve a great deal of time and organization on the part of someone, whether it be students, staff, or faculty and whether this work is paid or unpaid.

The “I am UBC” slogan is a great way to involve students in the institution’s branding. It attaches the university to the student’s identity, and it is a very clever way to get students to attach themselves and identify with the university. In doing so, it sets the tone and market demand for the university for years to come. It also means that a great deal of labour that the university depends on, such as student organizations, orienting new students to the university’s policies and procedures, and navigation of the university bureaucracy, can all become sought after forms of participation for students since they identify with the university in a way that is meaningful to them.

With the advent of social media, I am UBC has become #IamUBC. Try searching it on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. You’ll see breathtaking images of ocean and mountains as a backdrop to the Rose Garden area, or you’ll see fresh fruit and vegetables being grown at the UBC Farm. You may also see tudor style architecture, shiny and interesting museum exhibits, or First Nations symbols showcased on these feeds. All of these are representations of the UBC brand that the university- and the people who attach such meanings to it (such as students like yourself) have reproduced over the recent weeks, months, and years.

It is time to critically engage with #IamUBC at events like Imagine Day. This year, Imagine Day was overshadowed by a feisty rainstorm that ended up drenching festivities by the afternoon. I remember tabling for a student organization, Sociology Students’ Association. I enjoy what I do and I love interacting with students, new and established, in learning about their interests and putting on events engaging with social issues. It was participating in Imagine Day this year in this unique role that really made me think about my own role as a kind of representative of a certain part of the university to incoming Arts students this year. We had to “compete” with other clubs for students’ attention and curiosity. We ended up renting a button machine (which was the highlight of our table) in order to capitalize on students’ attention just to remain relevant in the sea of tables and booths. All of this is a part of the process of reproducing the I am UBC brand.

I remember seeing a friend of mine working at one of the tables and she seemed rather unhappy. After we chatted for a bit, she told me that she was actually an executive of one of the other student associations, but since she is doing an internship for one of the organizations on campus, she had to stay at that group’s booth instead of the one she identified with more. This is a demonstration of Marx’s concept of camera obscura, because it shows that peoples’ conception of things, like UBC or Imagine Day, is a product of their participation in and therefore attachment to certain ideas and values that make up institutions and organizations. In the case of UBC, it is the idea of personal development, achievement, and redefinition that all students are looking for as they go through a life stage or life transition into adulthood. The university profits from this arrangement of student identification, likely because students see a kind of freedom, or potential freedom, of this kind of identification. To see beyond the fuzzy images associated with #IamUBC and consider the ways you participate in UBC campus activities and organizations contributes to the university’s success means an ability to critically engage with who pays or profits from institutions like UBC.

 

 

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Seeking a Space, Performing a Space: Imagine Day at UBC

“On the first day of classes, campus is transformed and over 8000 new-to-UBC students and over 1000 faculty, student, and staff volunteers come together to welcome you to your new academic community and celebrate the start of the school year.” (Imagine UBC)

“The first-years are so unlucky, they get this cold and heavy rain on Imagine Day. Too bad for people at the booths. Who wants to be outside?” (talking with my friends)

Rain, rain, rain. As a featured outdoor event for new students (mostly first-year) to discover the student clubs and communities on campus, the Main Event seemed to have difficulties escaping the cold and heavy rain on the Main Mall on September 2, 2014.

Seeking a Space: Where is the Community I belong?

As a transfer student, that was my second school year at UBC, and naturally my second time being in the UBC Imagine Day. The Imagine Day description made I imagin that by connecting with the little space of a booth, I can later connect with a certain space on campus where I can call a community. This space could be a physical one (such as a club office or an event site) or/and an imagined one (such as a Facebook group, a friendship network), and it must be one where I feel comfortable revealing my identities (for example, a Chinese person) and behaving as myself. Yet my searching last year as one of the “new-to-UBC students“, I recall, did not lead to any fruitful outcomes.  I signed up for the Meditation Community’s email list, but I had schedule conflict with all of their events; I paid $10 for the membership of CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Association) but found it useless; several clubs that I signed up didn’t even send me any newsletters. Besides, what UBC described as  an “academic community” was largely absent in the Main Event, since nearly all the booths were presented by cultural, spiritual, and recreational clubs. Arts academic clubs, for instance, were told to present in the morning at Buchanan Courtyard, a space that was separated from where a wider audience located in the Main Event.

Wandering around the Main Mall among crowds of twenty-something-looking people, walking in and out among tents and booths, reading banners, signs and posters for information, writing down my name and email, talking or refusing to talk with others: I saw myself as one unit of complex identities attempting to build connections with other unites of identities.  Using Sherene Razack’s concept of linking bodies with space in Race, Space, and the Law (2002):

“[T]he symbolic and the material work through each other to constitute a space” (pp. 8). 

a space is not just an “innocent” space outlined by objects and people, it should be further analyzed as a social product (pp. 7). In other words, a space can be social, and its social meanings should be performed. In the searching of other spaces, bodies have to move, symbols and languages have to be shown, interpersonal interactions have to be performed (physically, verbally, emotionally). Occupying a bodily space in the Main Event, I saw myself entering, exiting, and re-entering different social spaces that were performed by groups of individuals with certain identities.

Performing a Space: A Chinese Community of What?

Redoing my searching this year, I tried to focus on one aspect that I was always interested in: the Chinese cultural clubs. Directly related to my identity as a Chinese student at UBC, I would like to use my perspective to briefly examine how a space is performed with social  meanings. How do these clubs represent themselves? What kinds of space do they create at UBC?

1. A Space of Language

A space can perform its social identities through verbal and written languages. It was easy for me to identify most of the Chinese cultural clubs by looking for signs and banners, since many of these material spaces were presented through Chinese characters. Interestingly, since modern Chinese have two written forms, some of the signs were in traditional Chinese, which was officially used in Hong Kong and Taiwan; some were in the simplified one, which was officially used in mainland China. This language difference not only showed the culture that the clubs intended to present, but also showed what audience these clubs were presenting to. Occasionally, I also hear Mandarin and Cantonese communicated between students. Building instant identity connections, language performs symbolic meanings through the material spaces; it also reflected the diverse cultural identities within the “Chineseness” of the clubs.

IMG_20140902_164751IMG_20140902_170747IMG_20140902_164730

[Language representation (top&middle: in traditional Chinese; bottom: in simplified Chinese).]

2. A Space of Racialization or/and Sexualization

Through asking questions to every Chinese cultural clubs I found, I noticed that the three most common events these clubs organize were parties, games, and ski trips. I imagined myself being in a club, a party room, and a Whistler hotel room, but I couldn’t imagine a conversation or a community. Once again, I found no way to seek an “academic community” among different Chinese cultural clubs. Moreover, I was shocked to hear some public announcements from two Chinese cultural clubs:

A male executive from one club spoke loudly to his surroundings: “….If you have yellow fever or Asian fever, this is the place for you.”

A male executive from another club said to the people who were passing by: “come for parties…… and get laid.”

Performing as representatives of their clubs, these two male executives presented their imagined community that I perceived as dangerous spaces. As a female I felt very uncomfortable with what these two particular clubs created within the public space of the Main Mall: the terms “yellow fever” and “get laid”, and the images (as show below) created a social spaces that was either racialized or sexualized, or both. The naturalization of the term “yellow fever” used in club promotion was especially problematic, since this term was profoundly based on western superiority and male domination. The term also brought me question the way non-white individuals use the racialized language in a predominantly white space. UBC is located in a white settler society, a space that is “established by Europeans on non-European soil”, as Razack explains (pp. 1). When naturalizing the term “yellow fever”, the male executive intended to attract non-Asian audience with racial/cultural preference to his imagined community. Yet he was completely ignorant of how the meanings and practices of this term do harm to an Asian female like me. I imagined that, if I were in a space that welcomes “yellow fever”,  my body would be realized mostly in terms of my race and my gender, and I would be expected to perform as a stereotypical Asian female who is submissive, reserved, and feminine. In no way I would feel safe!

CVC cute girlsHKSA party

Gendered and Sexualized texts and images.

Using Razack’s concepts of social space, when seeking a place with my identity as a Chinese person in Imagine Day, I observed how different Chinese cultural clubs perform their values and visions: first, symbolic performance, such as the banners with Chinese language; second, interpersonal performance, such as the public speech from executives. Notably, it was difficult for me to find a safe space among the Chinese cultural clubs that promoted parties as their main activities, because the way they performed their social spaces put me under the risk of being gendered, sexualized and racialized.

Reference:

Razack, S. (2002). Race, space, and the law. Toronto: Between the Lines.

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Entering a “Foreign Territory”

My Experience at a Social Club Ice Breaker on Campus

In the beginning of this school year, a couple of classmates and I decided to attend the ice breaker of one of the most well-known social clubs on campus.  I still remember the apprehension that built up as the event approached.  It was a combination of feeling excited about what’s in store and anxiousness  about being there.

The moment I stepped into the registration area, I felt a rush of nervousness despite the high positive energy that the club executives were giving off.  Only after seeing my classmate there did I feel a little bit less nervous.  I tried to act as casual as possible when getting myself a name tag in order to conceal my uneasiness.  It felt strange because when engaging in on-campus activities, I had often been on the host side where I was part of the group running the event.

The second time I felt strange was when I entered the venue where the ice breaker was to take place.  The room was already filled with people, chatter, and laughter.  Immediately I felt that I didn’t fit in.  After we watched the introductions to the club and a game started, my classmate and I left the venue together because we did not feel like participating anymore.

When we debriefed about our experiences and talked about how we felt, we realized that we felt uncomfortable for different reasons.  My reason was “I’m dressed differently.”  What I meant by that was literally that my clothing was fitting in with the rest of the participants at the event.  I felt that I was dressed a little too formally than everyone else.  However, I soon acknowledged to my classmate that I do realize that this is solely my own feeling – no one made any remark about the way I dressed nor did I feel that they looked at me in any way that elicited those feelings.  I knew that the reason I felt that way was due to my previous “knowledge” about how the club is perceived by others and how I didn’t fit into that description.

In the end, my classmate and I decided to head back to the ice breaker where we stayed until the event finished.

ubc

Relating this Experience to our Class

When I did the reading, “Guyland” by Michael Kimmel, I thought back to this experience.  For class, we read chapters 1 and 4 in the book.  In Chapter 1, Kimmel talks about the notion of “Guyland.”  “Guyland” is a phase in the life of males (in Western society) in which as boys, they become men.  Males in Guyland are mostly “white, middle-class kids; they are college-bound, in college, or have recently graduated….” (P. 8)  Concurrently, Kimmel speaks about Guyland as if it was a physical space.

After discussing about fraternities, in chapter 4, Kimmel writes about how college girls find their identities in their sororities in relation to these males.  Kimmel writes as though these girls are entering the physical location of “Guyland.”  The girls can choose to be either a “bitch” ¨(please excuse my language) or a “babe.”  The latter “ does not model herself on a guy’s expectations of her, but rather on her own expectations of herself,” (P. 249) and as a result they are shunned and ridiculed.  To be a “babe” one must comply with the expectations and social norms of the sisters and brothers.  For the girls, their first time entering Guyland is very unfamiliar to them, and the choices they then make have a big impact on their identities and how they are perceived by others.  In a similar yet non-identical way, I felt as though I was entering a “foreign territory” when I entered the event venue.  I was constantly thinking about how I was presenting myself and whether I should engage in activities (such as chants and photos) that I did not feel comfortable engaging in.  Thankfully, throughout the event, regardless whether I participated in the activity or refused to take part, the club members and event participants were non-judgmental and did not look down on me.  I felt respected regardless of the choices I made.

This is also a topic of structure versus agency, where this social club is a structure and everyone within it may or may not have agency depending on how the person personally feels.  For example, when I left the event out of nervousness, I chose to leave the event because I personally felt that I didn’t belong because of my preconceptions of the club.  The structure, or my preconception of the club, came into play with my choice or actions, or my agency.

To conclude, I must say that the social club I mentioned in this blog post is very different from Guyland in that basing off from my observations from the ice breaker event, the social club is an open and inclusive club and will not coerce club members and event participants to do things they don’t  actively nor passively.

 

Source: Kimmel, M. (2008). Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.

 

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Reflections

For this blog post I decided to focus on Michael Kimmel’s ideas on initiation. In Guyland he claims that an initiation’s “power rests on the instability of one’s identity. A person undergoes initiation in order to stabilize a new permanent identity” (Kimmel; Pg. 98). Kimmel’s study of the power on identity that initiations in to social groupings stem from his research on young men from the ages of 16-22 first taking on new responsibilities such as living on their own for their first time or having a job that requires active commitment. In his argument Kimmel explains that young men dislike the loss of “dependency and lack of autonomy of boyhood” that they must deny to themselves because they believe they will need to accept “the sacrifice and responsibility of manhood” (Kimmel; Pg 6) at some point in their lives to become a full adult. But it is because they miss the carefree nature of their youth that they despair and live at a point in their lives where they suffer from having a weak sense of identity.

It would be easy to say that people having a hard time identifying who they are join social groups. According to Kimmel a common belief around joining fraternities is that “once initiated, men no longer have identity crises wondering who they are, if they can measure up, or if they are man enough” (Kimmel; Pg 101). I, however, feel that there must be more to joining the allure of joining a fraternity than becoming someone different. I feel that Kimmel’s approach cannot encompass the average fraternity brother’s true feelings. A few weeks ago, I met with a young man currently going through the process of being initiated into a fraternity. These are my thoughts on our meeting.

This young man is currently pledging to Alpha Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity with a network of thousands of alumni. Pledges are able to apply to enter the Omega Gamma Investment group where they are able to handle and invest substantial amounts of money and derive hands-on experience in the field of finance. The allure of the professional experience alongside the large network of associates are fairly enticing opportunities for a young student to engage in.

The fraternity has four core values, which requires its members to uphold: Brotherhood, Integrity, Sharing of Knowledge, and Community Responsibility. In this way the fraternity’s goal is to promote the learning of business and to create ethical workers. Those pledging to the fraternity must go through interview processes where they are accepted if they fit the mold of someone whom the council believes has the potential to a good businessperson in their ethical image.

It is at this point that we can see changes in the identity possibly happen as some new pledges might change their behaviors in an effort to be accepted into the social group. These people might change the amount of lewd expressions they use in their language or change their profile pictures on facebook. But there must also be those who are already ethical, brotherly, moral, knowledge-sharing, community-minded individuals that already fit the mold just by their way of being and want to spend their university lives with likeminded individuals. In this way I disagree with Kimmel’s ideas on initiation into groups as it fails to look at the positive reasons why someone might want to join and fraternity.

 

References:

Kimmel, Michael. Guyland. HarperCollins e-books. 2009

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Do I Really Want to go to Graduate School? – Careers Day at UBC

Last month at UBC, the Careers Day Fair was open for 3 days (September 30 – October 2) at the Student Union Building to provide students with more information on graduate school opportunities with representatives from a university program at a booth. The Careers Day Fair was open to everybody and there was no sign-up necessary, so students were free to walk around and explore for themselves while in the Student Union Building. A question I’d like to bring up is why would people want to participate in these kinds career oriented events?

Personally, I participated because I wanted to learn more about the opportunities that are available to me after I graduate from UBC. I am currently a third year sociology student and I am interested in what graduate school has to offer. Because I’m very new to this, I don’t know much about what graduate school is about, what I must do to get accepted and what types of students they look for and I wanted more information on this. The ultimate reason as to why I attended was because I want to further my education and to give me an upper-hand when applying for jobs in the future.

As I mentioned, I want to get into graduate school because it will give me a higher advantage in finding a career. However, once one takes my perspective out of the picture and asks in society’s point of view, there’s a larger concept that influences why I want a career in the first place. Our society that we live in values capitalism and consumerism. In order for consumerism and capitalism to keep running, jobs must be taken by people to earn a living and survive. But it is not only about survival, it is also accumulating wealth and moving into different social classes.

My individual choice in wanting to apply for graduate school, is not a pure individual choice, it is also the dependent on many outside factors, such as the structure of institutions like family, school, government, and the pressures of societal norms that influence me to make this free will decision.  Ultimately, C. Wright Mills touches upon this subject in his book, “The Sociological Imagination.” He gauges the importance of understanding one’s own experience by locating oneself in the greater perspective of things. In other words, it is an understanding of oneself in relation to society.

So, how does little me affect our society? Each individual influences society, and society influences individuals. It’s kind of like an interdependent relationship. So, for me wanting to go to graduate school, I’m influenced by society to make this decision so that I have a better chance in finding a secure job after my schooling. In addition, I influence society as I am reinforcing this notion of earning money, and inevitably capitalism itself.

At the end of the day, yes, I still want to apply for graduate school and I wanted to explore my options in Careers Day. However, even though I do consider it as an individual choice, it is also important to remember the structures that influence us to “freely” choose to do something. My challenge for you readers is to think about why you’re doing something simple and natural to you. Why are you considering going into graduate school? Why do you want to go into the workforce right after graduation? Because at the end of the day, we are still part of a larger society and we cannot separate from ourselves from it, no matter how much we would like to think everything we do is out of our free will.

 

References:

Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.

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Sociological Imagination and Analyzing the Struggles of a UBC Student.

Life of a university student, more specifically a UBC student, surely comes with a number of difficulties that would get us thinking: What did we do to end up here? As students, we get so caught up by our own troubles, that we don’t consider their historical and biographical context. In other words,  we don’t really understand how our problems can have an effect on the society that surrounds us. We usually think that our personal problems only affect us individually, yet there is actually a connection between our issues and the framework of society.

In his article “The Promise of Sociology”, C. Wright Mills introduces the concept know as the Sociological Imagination,  a non-individualistic way to look at our personal problems in a much larger scale. Sociological Imagination shows us the distinction between a “personal trouble” and a “public issue” and helps us identify the relationship between our own individual troubles and problems that are on a larger scale.

Imagine a  UBC student who is under a financial struggle to pay for his education. Let’s call him Bart. Bart is pursuing his university education in UBC as a business student in Sauder and, due to not being financially able to afford schooling himself, is being funded with student loans. He then eventually faces student debt after completing his degree, and is stressed with having to earn the money he needs to repay his student loans. This would be known as a personal trouble, because the issue he is facing exists within himself.

Now, how can we view Bart’s problem on a larger scale? He surely wouldn’t be the only person facing financial troubles in university, let alone facing student debt. As a public social issue, having a large amount of students facing debt would affect the student community within the university and could possibly lead to changes in tuition costs or a change in the number of students attending UBC. Student loans and student debt can be seen as public issues because of how they extend beyond an individual’s personal problem, helping us understand the structure of society and how it can be amended.

The recent protest that occurred outside the Koerner library regarding fairness in tuition and housing process is an example of how public issues can change the structure of society. Because of proposed increases in tuition costs and residence contracts, students demanded lower costs in order to make their university experience much more fair and affordable for them. By protesting and expressing their outrage for the increase in housing and tuition costs, students are using their voices to promote change in the current social order. It is also worth thinking about how each student has their own personal troubles that are financial, which contributes to the amount of students financially struggling because of the high tuition and housing costs. Each student would have their own personal reasons to be involved in the protest, and with the amount of students who appeared outside the library to oppose the status quo, it is clear that the increase in tuition and housing costs is a public social issue that calls for change within the university system at UBC.

The use of Sociological Imagination is a helpful tool that we can use to analyze aspects of our lives and of those around us. In addition, it can help us understand why events such as the protest against increased costs take place and the issues that are to be addressed. By thinking about the relationship between personal troubles and public issues, we will be able to realize how the things that happen to us can affect the structure of the society we live in.

 

References:

Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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