The Global Sociology Blog

Sorry about the lack of recent posts, guys. Between the beginning of the term and the massive amount of academic writing I have foolishly and irresponsibly agreed to do, I will be swamped until February 15th.

That being said, while taking a break from The Writing, I watched this film, scifi fan that I am:

The movie was directed by Andrew Niccol who also directed Gattaca (which I really loved) and Lord of War (ditto). Now, the main plot is rather stupid and the main characters were poorly cast, in my view, but, as usual, I got more interested in the social background underlying the story.

For those of you who have not seen it, the story takes place in a dystopian future (aren’t they all?) where the dominant currency is time. People are genetically programmed to grow up until they reach 25, then, a clock embedded their arms starts and they have one year to live unless they can get extra years through labor, gambling, prostitution, or financial dealings. Everything is bought and paid for in time (minutes, hours, days, etc.). The whole language reflects the prevalence of time. When your clock gets down to zero, you just (literally) drop dead.

This society is highly stratified in a very Wallersteinian way. Financial investors are at the top of the social ladder and they live in wealthy (gated and highly secured) time zones that resemble Wallerstein’s core areas. There are middle time zones (the semi-periphery) and the ghettos (the periphery) where people are fully precarized in terms of time. They work for a few extra days, take out loans that deplete their clocks. The whole time system (financial system) is controlled by very large corporation, controlled by time-financiers who continuously extract time-value from the less wealthy time-zones (through labor, loans and control of the costs of living… when they need a time boost, the wealthy – in New Greenwich, a major core time zone – bump up the cost of living in the ghetto which extracts more time from the poor, that is transferred to the wealthy.

This translates in different behavior. In the ghetto, people are constantly checking their clock and rushing and running everywhere. That is how the main character gets spotted as “different” when he crosses into wealthier time zones. In the wealthy time zones, people move slowly. They have time.

There is more than enough time for everybody but the wealthy want to live forever, so, in that zero-time game, someone has to die for that to happen. And so, while the poor live highly precarized lives, doing anything to live a few more days, including engaging in fights through organized criminal groups where the goal of the fight is to deplete the other guy’s clock, the wealthy live lives surrounded by luxury but also lots of bodyguards in order to avoid the only deaths they can expect, through crime or their own stupidity (accidents).

In this society, law enforcement takes the form of poorly paid (based on a limited per diem allotment of time) time-keepers who keep track of time and maintain the stratification system. They are what Guy Standing would call the salariat, ideologically aligned with the global time elite, and making sure the precariat in the ghetto does not steal someone’s time even though they are economically closer to the precariat.

As I mentioned, the rest of the film is pretty much either garbage (the rich have it hard too!) or teenage nonsense (the bad boy from the ghetto and the poor little rich girl fall for each other and turn into Bonnie and Clyde 2.0). Apart from that, I think it is definitely meant as a metaphor for our times.

Embassytown is the second book I have read by China Miéville (the first one was the great The City And The City). Those who expect a fast-paced, action-packed space opera kinda of science-fiction will be deeply disappointed. Embassytown does have the basic ingredients of a science-fiction novel: humans on a alien planet whose inhabitants – the Hosts – tolerate them along with some trade but there is no symbiosis here.

The Hosts – the Ariekei – have a strange language that only pairs of modified humans – the Ambassadors – can speak. The humans live in proximity to the Ariekei city (in which they cannot breathe), in an area called Embassytown. The only communication between humans and Hosts goes through the Ambassadors. Embassytown is itself a human colony of another human world, Bremen, with whom politics are tense and complex.

But the key to the novel is the Hosts’ language. So, brush up on your Saussure (signifier / signified), or Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations or Levi-Strauss. The Hosts’ language is thought. The two are not separate. Language does not signify, it is. It is language and referent at the same time. Which is why the Hosts cannot lie because their language makes it impossible to say something that is not. This language is spoken at two levels (cut / turn), which is why it takes two modified humans speaking it at the same time to be understood by the Hosts. A single human speaking the language sounds to the Hosts like meat making unintelligible sounds.

And to convey ideas, sometimes, humans are used as similes, that is, literally experiencing what the Hosts want a simile for. The main character of the book, Avice Benner Cho, an Embassytonian native, is such a simile. She has also traveled beyond Arieke and has just come back.

Now, setting the context for all this, in addition to Avice’s biography takes about half the book. I suspect a lot of people have given up before reaching the point where the “action” starts, with the unprecedented arrival of two non-Embassytown-born Ambassadors from Bremen (actually, a modified human pair = one Ambassador, and they all have double names such as CalVin, EzRa, MagDa, etc.).

It turns out that when the way the new Ambassador speaks Language is like a drug to the Ariekei. They get addicted to it, let their civilization go to waste and otherwise behave like complete junkies. This might become a source of power for the humans but they rely on Ariekei for food and supplies so, their lives are at stake too. And the Hosts are constantly demanding their fix of EzRa speech and the humans provide. And then one of the humans that is part of EzRa commits suicide. What now? What happens to the addicted Hosts? What happens to the humans who can only hope to be rescued by Bremen and what… leave the Hosts to a slow and painful death?

And so both humans and Ariekei try to separately find a solution: a new drug-Ambassador for the humans, a way to be immune to the infected speech for Hosts, even if it involves horrible mutilation. This leads to the culmination of the conflict and the unraveling of Bremen political machinations, as well as some not-very-pretty truth about the way Embassytown gets its Ambassadors.

So, as I said, I am sure that a lot of people will be bored and give up on the book fairly early on. Another aspect of the book that might be off-putting is that the Ariekei remain resolutely alien throughout the story. Miéville does not try to humanize them or anthropomorphize them. And the human characters have no more real comprehension of their Hosts as the reader does.

And then, there is the main character herself. As she returns to Embassytown after years of space travel, she is determined to remain distant, so it might be hard for a reader to “engage” with a character who wants to remain detached from her environment. In the end, though, she has to get in deep. But the reader should not expect big emotional pay-offs from the book and I am sure this will frustrate a lot of readers.

Overall, then, this is a demanding book. No doubt about it. The long developments on being socialized in Embassytown, and learning the limits between the two civilizations, as well as the detours into Language may make the book an obstacle course for anyone expecting typical scifi adventure.. But ultimately though, this is a fascinating tale.

And I’m with Ursula Le Guin (read her whole review if you haven’t yet):

“The picture of a society shaken, shattered, wrecked to the foundation by a universal drug addiction infecting even the houses, even the farms, for they are all biologically akin, is apocalyptic vision on the grand scale – curiously beautiful, alien in every vivid detail, yet psychologically and socially only too familiar. Science fiction, like all fiction, is a way of talking about who we are.”

Sociologist me could not agree more.

So long, Sarah Jane Smith.

SJS (as brilliantly portrayed by Elisabeth Sladen, RIP) was the best early companion to the Doctor because she was not a naive young thing. She didn’t just run around, shouting “Doctor, watch out!” or “Doctor, look!” throughout the episodes.

She was the one and true precursor to Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, and Amy Pond (not so much Donna Noble because Donna had a different relationship with the Doctor, in her awesome Catherine Tate-esque way). She started that line of female companions, young women, who could really hold their own.

Of course, they all added a sentimental / romantic (and yet denied) dimension to the Doctor / companion dyad. But, as Sarah Jane told Rose, it was worth it getting your heart broken.

Here is SJS, making her first appearance in Doctor Who (3rd Doctor, Jon Pertwee), in Time Warrior:

And then, she left the original series (here with the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker):

Thankfully, she made a great comeback in the new series, in the episode School Reunion:

Heck, I even enjoyed The Sarah Jane Adventures:

So, we lost two major Doctor Who actors / characters this year: Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen. This really stinks.

The City and The City is the first book by China Mieville I have read. I got myself a Kindle copy when it got the Hugo Award. It is an awesome novel, and as usual, it is a great source for sociological analysis. At its most basic, The City and The City is a murder mystery coupled with a touch of conspiracy theory. But, as usual for sociologist me, the most interesting part of the book is the social context underpinning the story.

The story takes place in an unusual urban context of two city-states, Besźel and Ul-Qoma, that occupy the same physical space somewhere in Eastern Europe. The cities are divided between areas that are total (totally in one), alter (totally in the other) or crosshatched (in either). In areas that the cities share, citizens of either city have been socialized to unsense the other: to unsee, unhear, unsmell everything from the other city. And at the center is Copula Hall, the official border between the city and the city.

What this means is that when one is walking – or driving through – the streets of Besźel, for instance, one must NOT see, hear or smell anything from Ul-Qoma (and vice-versa). People from either city practice this constant act of dramaturgy of not sensing the other city that exists in the same physical space. Goffman would have had a field day with all the studied non-0bservance that takes place as people, more or less automatically and immediately unsee things happening in the other city. In fact, the entire social structure of both cities is based on that unsensing so much so that when things happen that make that almost impossible, social order is on the verge of collapse and extreme measures are taken.

So, this common space has two social structures, one for Besźel and one for Ul-Qoma, two different cultures, languages, food, clothing, etc. And it looks like Ul-Qoma (a vaguely communist country, boycotted by the US) is the more economically dynamic of the two.

In this context, people are expected to thoroughly respect the division between the city and the city. If they violate the separations, they breach. They are then spirited away by Breach, the mysterious force in charge of enforcing the division. No one knows what happens to people who have been taken by Breach. In this society, breaching is the most serious offense that deserves the most serious punishment (although what that is remains a mystery, for most part of the book). It is a given that, at some point, someone will breach and we, readers, will get to figure out what Breach really is and what it really does. Breach is perceived as a kind of omniscient Big Brother with the power to detect any breach and swing into action when that happens. Not breaching is a major fear for all the citizens of the city and the city.

Needless to say, the city and the city are themselves marked by social conflicts: each city has its own nationalist movement, strict supporters of the Cleavage (the separation between the city and the city) as well as its Unifs, the unificators, the movements promoting the reunification of the city and the city.

Throughout the book, we follow the detective in charge of solving the murder as he navigates the complexities of this intricate structure in the course of his investigation. He is from Besźel, but at some point is assigned to Ul-Qoma so that we get to compare the two cultures.

Ultimately, his own breach is what gives us an insight into the way Breach works and to the conclusion of the book, which one could read as a perfect manifesto for the social construction of reality or ethnomethodology as his Breach avatar explains to him:

“Nowhere else works like the cities,” he said. “It’s not just us keeping them apart. It’s everyone in Besźel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We’re only the last ditch: it’s everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It works because you don’t blink. That’s why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn’t work. So if you don’t admit it, it does. But if you breach, even if it’s not your fault, for more than the shortest time … you can’t come back from that.”” (5664)

“Doing” the city and the city is a matter of minutiae of social interaction (accomplished and denied at the same time) and constitutes an enormous amount of interactive collaboration (also as necessary as it is denied). It is this architecture of interaction that sustains the dual social structure and collective underpinning of the city and the city.

A fascinating read.

Here’s a lil’ presentation I used with my students:

[Formatting note: Dang it, the center won't hold]

I have already mentioned repeatedly that I am a huge fan of science-fiction, which I see as not separate from sociology. Said it before, say it again: good science-fiction is good sociology.

So, it seems to me that fans of science-fiction should rejoice because there have recently been quite a few good scifi movies (in addition to good TV revival shows, such as Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who). Let me just mention a few examples of things that I thought were great.

Of course, the scifi movie of the month is Inception. Love it or hate it (I liked it, didn’t like the end but was not bothered by the fact that this is not a movie about getting attached to characters, thank goodness for that actually), it has an intriguing storyline, neat special effects. In many ways, it reminded me of Dark City (another good recent scifi film). Exploring the dimension of human consciousness and mind is not a new theme for science-fiction. When Dark City came out, Roger Ebert declared it the future of science-fiction films”

“”Dark City” by Alex Proyas is a great visionary achievement, a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like “Metropolis” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” If it is true, as the German director Werner Herzog believes, that we live in an age starved of new images, then “Dark City” is a film to nourish us. Not a story so much as an experience, it is a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects–and imagination.”

Quite frankly, I am not sure whether the space opera sub-genre of science-fiction has much left to offer, since Star Wars sorta killed it (although the latest Star Trek movie gives me hope), so, quality in scifi movies has to be found elsewhere, and both films do that: telling you an intriguing story you have not seen before, which is more than most movies have to offer (you know, the kind where you can tell not just the ending, everything that is going to happen between opening and end credits just by watching the trailer).

In addition, in both cases, great care has obviously been taken regarding cinematography, special effects, set designs and soundtrack. Going back one step further in film history, I would argue that both films are the descendants of Brazil, minus the sarcasm and dark humor. Brazil remains an all-time favorite of mine.

In all three films, a lot of the has to do with dark urban settings (whether real or imagined or manufactured / and re-shaped on a regular basis) and characters struggling with reality (such as it is and pushing back against its oppressive nature, and sometimes paying a price for it. In all three films, the city is a dehumanized environment, impersonal or hyper-capitalized where other urban denizens are anonymous figures, easily interchangeable. Holding on to one’s individual identity gets tricky and a form of resistance.

In terms of construction and malleability of reality, I should mention the very scary, highly intriguing Spanish film Time Crimes even though one might argue it is not strictly science-fiction, it involves (very short) time travel, so, to me, it counts although I would concede that it straddles the fence between science-fiction and horror, not that there is anything wrong with that.

And when there is time travel, there is always the question of whether one can change the past to right some wrong (even if the wrong took place just an hour or so in the past) or whether such attempts keep making things worse. It is a movie that was probably shot on a shoestring budget but it grabs you and does not let go until the end.

Moving on, science-fiction has also always explored “what if” scenarios, exploring what happens after the big disasters that we fear actually do happen. In this post-apocalyptic genre, one can find zombie movies (the old living dead movies of the 50s reflecting on the fear of Soviet invasion, or the post-nuclear holocaust sub-genre). More recently, of course, the disaster genre has focused on environmental devastation whether due to climate issues or planetary “malfunctions”. More interesting, from a more strictly scifi point of view are a couple of films related to the scarcity era: once we run out of vital resources, then what. I think two movies stand out:

Moon is not an artistically elaborate film. It is actually quite simple but deals with what it means to be human. I like it precisely for its simplicity. And it is more entertaining than Solaris (yeesh, I never got that one, old or new). The movie also involves the consequences of the commercialization of everything and how far economic and labor exploitation can go.

The other movie, of course, is Pandorum. I am usually pretty good at figuring movies out and solving enigmas. So, I especially appreciate a movie that keeps me guessing for a while, and this one did. It does deal with being forced off the Earth for various reasons and what happens on the way to getting to some other planet. Along with ethical issues pertaining to being the only humans left.

So, I guess, my main point for fans of intelligent science-fiction, there are a lot of interesting things going on right now in movies and on television (as opposed to crappy, misogynistic, homophobic and reactionary adaptations of comic books), and not just from the US, but from Europe as well.

And I may have mentioned before how much I liked this animated film as well. Again, a simple and relatively short story but very well done and carefully crafted (even though I did not like the end, seemed like a cop out to me).

I don’t know whether we can speak of a “renewal” or “revival” of the science-fiction genre and its various sub-genres. That might be pretentious but it just seems to me that there just has been a series of interesting films that show that young directors with distinctive artistic visions are interested in scifi and its narrative possibilities.

I am just glad to see there is still life in that genre (as opposed to romantic comedies, and doods movies) because quite frankly, wizards and hobbits and superheros are annoying.

Usual disclaimer: good science-fiction is good sociology, and Robert J. Sawyer is one of my favorite scifi writers (along with fellow Canadian Robert Charles Wilson). WWW: Watch is the second volume in the WWW trilogy (the first volume, WWW: Wake reviewed here). I have to say that I enjoyed this one more than I did the previous volume. I would confess that, while reading Wake, I skimmed some passages (especially the emerging consciousness parts).

In Watch, the emerging consciousness come into his (since it’s decided to make it masculine… hmm) own and starts to deal with the complexities of humanity. At the same time, it’s becoming more present attracts the attention of the agencies of the Surveillance Society, especially from the US. And a decision is quickly made by the US President and his representatives, WebMind (the name the entity is given) has to be destroyed. I am guessing its survival will be at the heart of the third volume.

For now, in Watch, Webmind gets busy absorbing information and trying to put it to good use. There is no doubt that Sawyer is fascinated by the ethical questions raised by the emergence of a virtual consciousness and how this reflects upon humanity. Although, as a sociologist, the “everything can be explained by game theory” meme can get a bit annoying and a gross simplification of human relationships.

The first volume also wove together other storylines: Hobo the half-chimp / half-bonobo. We find that story again in Watch. However, the Chinese storyline is remarkably absent from Watch. I’m guessing, it will be picked up in the third volume. It might be a matter of economy of storylines as the introduction of Watch (the US spying agency) takes quite a bit of space here. There is also more involvement from the characters of Caitlin’s parents.

As with Wake, Watch is still organized around the character of Caitlin Decter, the blind American teenager who gets her sight back thanks to a device from a Japanese scientist. Actually, she got more than her sight back. She can also “see” the web. In Watch, there is still quite a bot of space dedicated to her struggling with viewing and how it affects her relationships with her parents and friends… and boyfriend (the least interesting part of the book… but teenagers are notoriously uninteresting in that department).

Again, the most interesting part of the book, beyond being a great story, deals with questions of dealing with an Other, the nature of consciousness and human relationships. The book seamlessly weaves together great storytelling, science-fiction, philosophy and science and that makes it a real page-turner, again, more so, in my view, than Wake.

Needless to say, I can’t wait for the third volume.

Darn it, how did I miss this smart and clever animated film?

I wish the ending had been different but I completely agree with Roger Ebert’s review:

9 :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews via kwout

The visuals are indeed stunning but they do not substitute for the story. And I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories and this one is way better than Terminator. It feels like what would have happened to the society of Brazil (the movie) if the machines had decided to exterminate the humans. This supposed futuristic society, as in Brazil, has a Baudrillardian nostalgic feel to it, with a very 1940s look, complete with a Hitler-like dictator and a Nazi aesthetic (I would argue that Brazil is a futuristic extension of Nazism).

What can I say about Avatar that has not been written already, especially in this often-cited post:

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? – Avatar – io9 via kwout

As mentioned all over the place, this is Dances with Wolves meets The Last Samurai where noble savages who, unlike modern white folks, have not lost their connection to nature and are happy in their spiritual bliss and gentle nature stewardship (see how the Na’vi connect – literally – with animals and other natural elements, including souls). Cameron’s noble savages are very new-agey and, in a very 2009-fashion, they are connected to each other and the entire ecosystem through a global network (as Grace the biologist – Sigourney Weaver – tells us).

Against them are lined the superior forces of global corporations and military contractors who do their bidding and get well paid for it. And the battle is over resources that Pandora has and that Earth needs. The corporation wants it and it will take it one way or another. The message on environmentalism and the rights of indigenous peoples is not exactly subtle.

And so, the movie culminates in the final battle between mean Goliath against the gentle David. But the Na’vi have a joker card which answers the question asked in the post cited above:

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? – Avatar – io9 via kwout

I have a different view. It’s not about having a character to relate to. It’s about white supremacy. Let’s look at the evidence: Jake Scully gets initially introduced into the tribe because of some religious sign that designates him as special and he will be the only one to be able to connect with the big-ass red bird that will come so handy in battle and reinforces his spiritual status as “Super Na’vi”. And that is on top of the skill set he brings to the tribe: his marine and military training, which will ultimately save the Na’vi. The noble savages, with their bows and arrows, need a white military man to save them and become their leader. Where have we seen that before? Oh, yeah, in tons of movies. The white man in the avatar becomes a better Na’vi than the true Na’vi (and gets the girl, of course).

So, even though we are presented with a story that is designed to convey a message of environmentalism, multiculturalism and peace, we end up with the maintenance of white supremacy… oh and apparently, violence works, especially when based on military training, it’s what allows the Na’vi to win, once all the tribes are united under the leadership of Jake Scully. Without him, they’d be toast.

And, by being a super Na’vi, Scully can erase his being a defective / inferior white man due to his disability who initially agrees to spy on the Na’vi to regain his legs and therefore become a full man again, as promised by the über-patriarchal man delightfully played by Stephen Lang.

Oh, and let’s not forget who tells the story: Jake Scully. He is the narrator all through the movie. White man’s voice and perspective.

As I watched the movie, I could not help thinking whether all these people in the movie theater would think twice about drone bombing in AfPak? I don’t think so. It seems that the sociologists over at Sociological Images are skeptical as well:

On Avatar, The Movie (Spoiler Alert) » Sociological Images via kwout

In other words, because it relies so much on common colonizer history revised through multicultural lenses that more befit the enlightened 21st century, the story is entirely predictable, almost plot point by plot point.

Another interesting aspect of the story is detailed by Antonio Casilli (and links to a full peer-reviewed article in French for those of you who read it). Casilli’s argument is that cultural analysis shows that there is nothing really new about the avatar trope, including its blue color.

“How come it’s BLUE?” The origins of James Cameron’s Avatar | BodySpaceSociety via kwout

So, why is it blue?

“How come it’s BLUE?” The origins of James Cameron’s Avatar | BodySpaceSociety via kwout

Do check out the illustrations over at Casilli’s post. The theme is ubiquitous.

And the disable hero? Another common cultural trope:

“How come it’s BLUE?” The origins of James Cameron’s Avatar | BodySpaceSociety via kwout

Do read the whole thing or the paper itself if you can.

All that being said, the movie is certainly enjoyable and not boring (even though the final battle scene was getting a bit long for me). I saw it in 3D and the visuals were indeed stunning (the images of the forest at night were beautiful) but again, it has to be viewed with a critical eye beyond the technical prowess.

Believe it or not, this is the first book by John Scalzi I have ever read. I figured I had to start somewhere since he is now one of the heavyweights of the scifi world. I have to say that Agent to the Stars had me at “We have seen The Blob  and it is us.” That line alone cracked me up and kept me going. The book is fast-paced, funny (which is not hard when you get to take potshots at Hollywood).

The book falls into the first contact category. The problem is, the aliens are friendly enough but they’re ugly and the smell awful, so, how can they make a peaceful introduction to humanity? Simple: hire an agent to come up with a PR plan. The book reads as a sort of screwball comedy as the agent in question, Tom Stein, has to deal with the resident alien he has custody of, along with his Hollywood human clients. And, of course, one of the funniest aspects of the book is the fact that the aliens have “observed” humanity before contacting an agent, mostly by watching TV and so, they have a lot of fun quoting American popular culture. It’s a fun read… for a while

And then, a pattern begins to emerge, one which almost made me throw the book across the room and ruined the entire thing for me. Agents to the Stars is a very sexist book. One only has to consider the gendered distribution of characters. Let me count the ways:

The big movers and shakers in the book are all white men (Carl, Tom, and even Jim). They are the dominant figures and the ones who get things done. It’s all a men’s world and they navigate it with competence and skills. Now, the women? Oh boy:

- Michelle Beck, the movie star, typical ditzy blonde who becomes famous in movies that guys get to jerk off of and, stupid and clueless that she is, wants to act serious parts and therefore has to be manipulated into a reading that she is scheduled to fail. Then, thankfully, as she botches her own suicide attempts and falls into a coma, her stupid brain gets destroyed and replaced by that of a much smarter (and masculine acting) alien who then gets the serious and meaningful part that Michelle wanted.

- Miranda Escalone is supposed to be the smart (and yet attractive with a shady past) woman of the book. She can fight too. She can even kick a man’s ass and proves it, although, in typical feminine fashion, she does so in the midst of being hysterical. And as smart and witty as she is, she’s only a secretary and love interest for one of the big men AND ultimately, her big part in the book is to have her FEMALE brain used as template by the alien to replace Michelle’s destroyed brain.

Strike that as the two major female characters used as containers or templates… to be fair, the alien had training: he used a dog first, then, upgraded to human females.

- Amanda, the newbie agent promoted from the mailroom, who Tom uses to dump the clients he no longer will have time to deal with as he has to focus on his new alien clients. Poor little Amanda who will need guidance and only comes into her own as she mimics Tom’s habits. Oh, and whom does she inherit as her first client?

- Well, none other than Tea Reader, a nasty bitch of a singer turned actress who has only one thing going for her: her tantrums.

- For the sake of diversity, we also have the angry black woman. Actually, she is the mother of Rashaad Creek. We all know how incompetent black men are, so, here it is his nasty and domineering mother that manages his career.

Should I go on? Yes, because we should not forget

- Avika Spiegelman who is the relative of a Holocaust survivor / Civil Rights activist whose lifestory is the serious part that Michelle Beck had in mind. Of course, initially, Avika is vehemently opposed to Michelle having a reading for the part. So, once the dumb Michelle has been sucked out and replaced by the smart alien with the smart human female brain template, how can she be convinced to give the “new” Michelle another chance? Well, nothing like a good verbal bitch-slapping, in front of two men. Put the bitch in her place!

And I quote

“”I don’t need to be insulted by you,” Avika said [After a couple of rounds of being called a bitch by the "new" Michelle"]

“Well, you need to be insulted by someone,” Michelle said. “And it looks like I’m the only one here with enough interest in you to do it. Sort of sad, really.”" (340-1)

See? Being insulted is actually being paid a favor. Oh, and there is better. The bitch-slapping works, Michelle reads for the part, and, of course, with her new and improved brain, she is great…

“After an hour, Avika dropped the script at her feet. “I wouldn’t have believed it,’ she said, simply.

“I know you wouldn’t,” Michelle said, as simply. “And I thank you, Avika, my friend, for finally letting me show you.”

Avika burst into tears and headed towards Michelle. Michelle burst into her own tears and met Avika halfway. They stood in the middle of the room, crying hysterically. Roland and I looked over at each other. Both of us had these incredibly smug smiles on our face.

We were in business.” (343)

Emphasis mine… get me the puke bucket.

I posted my review of Makers a few days ago here. Urbanverse also reflects on the future presented in Makers and extracts the major features of the book beyond the individual characters and storylines:

Images of Future Cities: Courtesy of Makers by Cory Doctorow – urbanverse’s posterous via kwout

I have disagreements with some of UV’s assessment (slums are not idyllic and leadership is not ad hoc but rather fairly patriarchal and authoritarian). And walking a bit to lunch is common in Europe.

Similarly, Makers does not get rid of big corporations. They still exist and the hip, cool and free inventors still need capital and comes from suits and financiers. But it is still a world where a lot of people are made redundant. Power relations have not significantly changed. And all the stuff that gets made, in Makers, is largely based on fads and nostalgia propagated across networks. The social utility seems remote (beyond finding stuff without having to look for it).

Images of Future Cities: Courtesy of Makers by Cory Doctorow – urbanverse’s posterous via kwout

Well, no. It is a gross simplification of social relations and it ignores the power of the social structure.

Go read the whole thing.

Cory Doctorow‘s Makers has a lot in common with the previous books I have read from him and the themes developed throughout the stories are also familiar to many regular Doctorow readers. As in previous novels, Doctorow locates his story in a futuristic United States / Western hemisphere where capitalism as we know it has collapsed in one way or another.

Makers is no exception as the story unfolds in a world of affluence that still has wreaked havoc on the social structure. Indeed, the story starts with the merging and dismantling of big blue-collar companies Kodak and Duracell by entrepreneur Landon Kettlewell to be replaced by a completely precarized workforce working on small-scale projects with profit potential subsidized by grant-type money that the corporation provides.

This is the ultimate result of a fully precarized society / risk society where everybody is a permanent temporary worker: love it or become a slum dweller as many of the characters do in Makers. This is a geek economy for  young skillful and creative engineers who have very little need for regular salaries and benefits, as are main character Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks.

The pair of geek pals is also a recurring theme in Doctorow’s books, with the ulterior addition of a woman (or women) into the mix as the story develops. Such core pairs are present in Little Brother, Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom as well as Eastern Standard Tribe, with one über geek and one more business / rationality oriented, with other characters, including villains that belong to the State or the Corporation as major Surveillance and fun-killing entities.

And in all these novels, the main characters have a hard time growing up and resist it as much as they can, hence the fascination in both Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom and Makers, with Disneyworld. Indeed, in Makers, the Perry / Lester dynamic duo’s main goal in life is to manufacture cool geeky stuff for people to by but making money is not much of a concern of theirs. Throughout the book, “adults” will do that for them. It is actually when they are faced with adult responsibilities that things fall apart. So, it is not surprising that the happy ending has them back shoulder to shoulder in a makeshift lab, many years later, back to doing geeky stuff, under the loving gaze of the journalist (and later wife of one of them) who has followed their careers, noting with a little sadness, that her “little boys” have grown… actually, they have not. They are just older. Throughout the book, they both get angry, sulk, stop talking to each other, act on impulse, etc. In other words, they behave like teenagers, as most main characters in Doctorow’s novels do and all complain when the world does not bend to their adolescent geeky dreams.

As always, when reading futuristic / scifi books, I am interested in the social context that constitutes the background for the story. As mentioned above, Makers’ society is a society that is fully precarized, the educated and skilled in computer creativity are the one who survive or even thrive in the precarized environment. Big corporations are seen as evil forces, enforcing their rule through IP lawsuits. In Makers, there is no government to speak of, and certainly not one that provides a safety net for those who have the misfortune of not being creative AND educated / skilled / enjoying the “freedom” of being precarized. And so, Lester and Perry jump from one creative idea to the next, chafing against corporate pressure, grudgingly agreeing to a business side to their ventures, all for open source and sharing. Whatever they do is inconsequential as there are always a millionaire, a business manager and a journalist to clean up the messes they (inadvertently) create in such anomic environments.

In Makers, the good guys create an open source economy where everyone can share the benefits, contribute ideas and all together generate cool projects for this post-utilitarian society where entertainment seems to be a major goal (again, a theme highly reminiscent of Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom). The introduction of 3D printers manufacturing objects allows for the mass production of fads that are short-lived and easily replaced. In this society, people have to make their own job. It is ultimate precarization and individualization mixed with the loose communautarism of the network society. There is no doubt that such a loose social structure would leave a lot of people behind not just in the US but around the world but the novel celebrates the joining together of individual creative forces combined with high-flying technological skills.

It was for me a source of frustration with the book: the celebration of the cool and geeky precarized labor structure based on making tchotkes for those who can afford them, with the pretense that corporate structures are an impediment to creativity and networked solidarity. Unsurprisingly, as shown in the novel, this is a loose social structure that is attractive to the young and unattached who can connect / disconnect / reconnect in this truly liquid society. At the same time, as much as corporations are loathed, the whole open source society is still backed by financial investors and millionaires (or the Mafia in the small part of the story that takes place in Russia).

But what of those left behind? There is a certain romanticization in the novel as the slum dwellers of Miami also have their condition unleash their creative forces and they create their own social structure and it does not feel that it is a slum at all. Again, who needs state services and support when there is always a high-tech, environmentally-friendly solution to be designed.

Now, I do not fault Doctorow for glaring omission in his depiction of this futuristic society, but as I mentioned, there are major sources of frustration for the sociologist in me because this type of complete societal dismantlement and every man for himself is presented as apolitical. Sure, kids on the Internet fight the big bad corporation that is trying to kill their cool “ride”. But apparently, the general precarization has been embraced by everybody and has not generated any resistance (except for a brief mention of the Kodak and Duracell unionized workforce at the very beginning) or any significant social movement against the inevitable destruction of the livelihood of what must be significant proportion of the population.

Bottom line is as much as I enjoyed the book, it reminded me too much of the endless presentations I have had to endure as to how to deal with the Millenials. It seems this book is written for them and maybe by one of them (even if he is not the right biological age). Perry and Lester, the main characters of Makers, are the ultimate Millenials (as they have been stereotyped in the media and the educational consulting business).  In this fictional society, there is not much room for the elderly, the non-creative or anyone who wishes for stability (and who knows what happens to the societies of the periphery as only Russia and Brazil are mentioned). At the same time, the apolitical outlook erases some of the bitter conflicts that would be bound to happen (extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism). It seems that everybody has embraced some sort of networked cosmopolitanism revolving around white American geeks.

Again, I enjoyed the book. It is a page-turner and the multiplicity of characters creates a diversity of storylines that keeps one interested, in spite of sociologically frustrating aspects mentioned above. The subtitle of the book is “A Whirlwind of Changes to Come” that seem to add up to a dystopia where only a few can make it and too bad for the global rest.

Customary sociological statement: good science-fiction is good sociology.

Disclaimer: I’m an idiot when it comes to short stories and novellas. I always feel like I am missing something or that something has been kept out of the story.

Metatropolis is an interesting project: five established science-fiction writers produce stories on a common theme with some, but not too much, overlap (AKA the shared-world genre). Initially, the project was released as an audiobook, then turned into a book (with a great cover design, in my opinion). John Scalzi is the editor and the author of one of the stories. The other authors are Jay Lake (whose story opens the collection), Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear and Karl Schroeder.

All the stories take place in a post-affluence, post-fossil fuel future. The oil is finally largely gone. Environmental degradation has finally vanquished the unsustainable lifestyles of Western societies. So how do people live in what were the major structures of the post-scarcity world, the cities? In a way, it’s like all the authors sat down with Saskia Sassen and got the run down on global cities and global flows.

The basic premise of all the stories is to explore how people live and work as the major social institutions institutions and structures collapsed, including capitalism. What economic systems emerge out of the rubble? Which categories of people come out on top? What does the post-national, post-capitalist world look like? And what of the new technologies, the Web 2.0 stuff? What use are they in this context? What kinds of social solidarity.

Indeed, all the stories revolve around a character trying to find his/her place in this new world and navigate its omnipresent dangers, risks and insecurities. The stories depict a world of thorough surveillance society combined with some measure of anarchy as many groups successfully manage to create their own parallel realities, real or virtual. In all the stories, precarious conditions are the norm. Certainties are gone. The main characters hop from odd job to odd job without much direction. They are perpetual consultants based on their skills but always literally and figuratively out of place.

And so, each story proposes its own version of social structuring after the end of oil. In Jay Lake’s story, it’s the Cascadian neo-anarchist, living-in-harmony-with-nature commune. In Tobias Buckell’s story, it’s the eco-terrorist collectives reclaiming of urban space for sustainable, vertical agriculture. In Elizabeth Bear’s story, this reclaiming takes place partly outside of the city. In John Scalzi story, we see more clearly the return of the medieval, yet high-tech, zero footprint, city-state, sovereign and autonomous, and closed-off to The Wilds (everything outside of it) fighting off the “Barbarians at the Gate”. And in Karl Schroeder’s story, the new cities / societies take the form of alternate virtual realities.

All the stories are stories of struggle: the main characters struggle with the consequences of their past actions, struggle to find their place in this new world but are often nomads. Surviving doing odd jobs, they find themselves in the middle of power plays between different groups, often the remnants of the oil society who try to hold on to what is left, using the security company Edgewater (does that sound familiar?) to do their dirty work of cracking a few eco-freaks and anarchist skulls versus the urban renewal groups. Metatropolis is a world in flux. Old boundaries have disappeared (including boundaries between the real and the virtual) and the major societal struggles are between those who wish to erect new barriers and those who accept to live in a world of flows.

Which means, of course, that social inequalities have not disappeared. There are still privileged classes (those who have access to the remaining resources and hold on to them) and the disadvantaged masses, trying to figure out how to survive in the dislocated (literally and figuratively) world. In this context, the forms of solidarity that emerge are of the tribal or network type. Whatever security is to be found in the real world come from joining a tribe and in the virtual alternate realities, from plugging into networks. Indeed, in Karl Schroeder’s story, Manuel Castells’s network society has found it full incarnation (an inadequate term for virtual societies overlaid over the real one).

In other words, Metatropolis raises the perennial sociological question of the possibility of social order in the post-affluence, post-fossil fuel world and each other provides his/her specific answer. The city, in all the stories, remains at the heart of social structuration, albeit in a permanently conflicting and blurry way. These globally-connected cities truly are Saskia Sassen’s global assemblages.

He’s actually too kind since he limits himself to “stuff” like the Death Star, and creatures, like Sarlaac. Don’t get me started on the characters themselves.

AMC – Blogs – SciFi Scanner – John Scalzi’s Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design via kwout

And I cannot wait for that!

Someone just HAD to produce a remake and I totally want to see it:

Compare to the original: