For teachers on those gloomy days when they aren’t sure why they’re doing what they’re doing. Poet Taylor Mali deconstructs negative hegemonic views of teachers and teaching… Beautiful.
With thanks to Karl Maton on the sys-func email list.
11 December 2008
Online journals
Yes, it’s advertising from Sage. But it’s also quite useful. Sage, who periodically offer free online access to their journals, have made the full texts of 24 journals in the field of communication and media studies free until 31 December 2008. Includes European Journal of Coomunication, Journalism, Media, Culture & Society, and New Media & Society. Register online.
8 December 2008
Advisors or salespeople?
What should we call those people who work in banks and offer us suggestions as to where we should save/invest our money? The conventional term is ‘bank advisor’ [Bankberater_in]. But Michael Opoczynski warns us that this phrase is quite inappropriate. As is ‘banking charges’ [Gebühren].
These people are salespeople. They do not advise. They sell. They aim to make a profit. And these are ‘banking prices’, not ‘charges’.
…or words to that effect. Opoczynski, anchorman for ZDF’s consumer protection show, Wiso, was speaking last night on Menschen2008.
p.s. An even more analysable, although far less conventional, term for domesticating/sanitizing/recategorizing this job: ‘Relationship Manager (for) Corporate Clients‘.
7 December 2008
Ergography
Writing about research is always about reducing; writing about research is also about translation – translating from ‘world’ to ‘word’. A recent review essay by Bart Penders and Annemiek Nelis proposes ‘ergography’ as an alternative means of writing about research, in particular the results emerging from large-scale qualitative research programmes. Ergography is ‘a reverse translation process, back from word to world’.
Rather than presenting research findings in a book or an edited collection of essays, ergograpy (from Greek graphy: account/record, and ergo: work/product_of_work/act_of_labour) invites readers into the research process. Rather than presenting finished products, it presents powerpoints, observation journals, field notes, etc, thus making the work of gathering materials, making observations, generating ideas, etc. visible to readers.
Penders, Bart & Nelis, Annemiek (2008). Reporting Large-Scale Qualitative Research: The Ergography. Review Essay: Andrew Webster (Ed.) (2006). New Technologies in Health Care. Challenge, Change and Innovation [33 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1), Art. 18, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0901182. [open-source journal]
5 December 2008
Putin the President Part II?
After answering questions from the public on television and radio today, Vladimir Putin responded to questions from the media. One in particular reflects worries/interest among western journalists:
QUESTION: Can you say for certain that you will not revert to the presidential office in the next 12 months?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Strange as it may seem, this question interests foreign journalists more than their Russian colleagues.
I would like to note that President Medvedev and I have established a very good tandem. We have worked together for many years, and I am very happy about our effective cooperation.
The next elections in the Russian Federation will take place in 2012. I think that everyone should perform his duty in his place. There is no need to fuss about what will happen in 2012. Let’s make it to that time, and then decide.
5 December 2008
Let’s make money
…posted with vodpod
Excellent new film from Erwin Wagenhofer, maker of Feed the World, Let’s Make Money travels around the world, filming and/or speaking to financial investors, factory workers, top ‘economic hitmen’, cotton pickers, economic and agriculatural experts and many more. Some shocking images of what is being done to make money around the world (in part with money that we give to our banks to ‘safe-keep’, i.e., to invest).
Favourite film moment is one of the juxtapositions of completely incompatible arguments. First we see a long scene showing workers picking cotton in Burkina Faso and hear intelligent analysis of the situation by Francis Kologo. He notes that the USA gives 3 million US dollars of subventions to domestic cotton production every year. “If Americans a liberal, why are they subsidizing their own cotton production? They’re protectionist, but demand that we are liberal.”
Okay, this is perhaps not new information for the audience which is likely to go to see this film. But it is immediately followed by the following comment from Gerhard Schwarz, chief editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about migration:
All liberals of this world are of the opinion that borders should be open, for goods, for money and for services. It’s more difficult with people. There, you have to think about whether we need to demand some kind of admission fee, like clubs charge admission fees. If you want to join a tennis club, you generally have to pay an admission fee. Not only a monthy or annual fee, like taxes, but a one off admission charge, because the predecessors who are already there, they built the club house, they built the place up; and a newcomer profits from something which he didn’t contribute anything to.
‘Didn’t contribute anything to’? Yes, well. The worrying thing about immigration discourse, is that this opinion seems fairly wide-spread. Contested by films such as Wagenhofer’s Let’s Make Money, aiming to show the interrelatedness of the whole global population.
