Strathern, M - Binary License

Strathern, M. (2011). Binary license. Common Knowledge, 17(1), 87.

This article is part of a symposium on the 'impossibility' of comparative relativism.

Strathern begins with an account of migrant identity, which is difficult to describe in Euro-American scientific gloss since it is so multiple and 'anti-taxonomic'.

The article arose out of a need to expand on thoughts from a different article, that needed to compare Melanesian thought to Euro-American social science. In order to do this act of comparison, Strathern feels the need to justify and clarify the use of comparison between indigenous and analytical modes of thought. She wants to focus on the moment of division between two concepts, which is not necessarily, but commonly, binary.

Comparison and relativism: a contradiction? In order to compare, you must draw out one concept from another, "externalize it from the point of comparison" (paraphrasing Strathern). Relativity seems to be incommensurate with that, since relativity says that everything is "contingent on its own particularities."

A binary distinction is not necessarily one between opposites, or one that cleanly bifurcates a whole. Rather, distinctions permit one branch of argument to form by suggesting that there are alternatives. But, binarism forces you "to take a stance" in opposition to some other

Perspectivalism: one world, many viewpoints

Perspectivism: many worlds, one capacity for viewpoint

The critique of perspectivalism is 'multiplicity' - that there are multiple viewpoints overlapping and disjunct from each other.

Melanesians define themselves not in reference to a pre-existing absolute, but in reference to their relationships to other people. Therefore, when they compare each other, they compare not in reference to such absolute, but to an analogous relationship.

Chinese gamers are different from Western gamers not in that they are inherently 'Chinese' but that they have different relationships - to their families, their ancestors, their cities, and also to the globe - relationships that one might roughly label 'Han' 'Confucian' or 'Chinese' for exigency (or various other reasons, as we see in the example of the Hagen immigrants in PNG), but are of course much more complicated. These relationships run parallel or analogous to relationships among Westerners, who also have families and ethnicities and such. In the Western mode, to compare 'Chinese' and 'Western' leads to multiplicity because appealing to these absolutes implicates the identities left out  - thus, responses like, "but 'Chinese' is such a contingent label. What about ethnic minorities, rural Han, Taiwanese or Cantonese people? Isn't the 'Chinese' experience contingent upon also gender, age, class, etc?" Yes, but Westerners are the same way. 

It is because everything is always contingent, multiple and there are no absolutes (ie.: relativism) that comparison itself is possible. In the absolute mode, in order to make a comparison you have to draw on some commonality: apples and oranges are both fruit. But then, what is a fruit? Is a tomato a fruit? We can compare Chinese and Westerners because they are all human, but what does human even mean? We're not like animals? You have to keep defining your terms all the way down. Yet, if everything is already related, if identities are defined by breaking people down rather than building absolutes, parallels between these different lives become apparent. In a way, contingency itself is the ultimate commonality. Thus the Melanesian aphorism that all people are already related.

So, Chinese gamers have similar disagreements to Western gamers in this parallel, analogous sense, where everything is pretty much the same, yet totally different. Chinese gamers are concerned with the conflict of money and skill in the game as well, they have a sense that the VW is in some way divided from the real world, there is concern for spending too much time playing games. Yet, in lacking the history of the struggle with the transcendent/absolute, Chinese gamers interpretations of these problems are slightly different.

So why draw comparisons this way? Strathern cites Simon Harrison's work on conflict, wherein surface attributes of Melanesian conflict are also identified in Western conflict, but disguised. So the Melanesian attribute is not inherently 'Melanesian', but a universal that is expressed in varying ways among varying populations. Thereby, Harrison avoids making a binary distinction between 'Westerners do it like this, Melanesians do it like this' yet can still draw a comparison.

Super-good article. Now to read the responses.

Media Ideologies - Ilana Gershon

Published in J. of Linguistic Anthropology, this article is an introduction to a special issue on Media Ideologies, and therefore also an introduction to the scope of the topic. Media ideologies: essentially, what do people believe about the media they use? The first section is concerned with justifying media ideologies as a field, then the range of topic it can cover is explored by a summary of each article in the special issue.

The emphasis is on the technology used, this distinguishes media ideologies from language or semiotic ideologies. "Media" can mean the technology, the channel, or the semiotic system, or all of these at once. The point is to draw attention to the medium of the signs, and to articulate the field between language ideologies and media studies. "Ideology" has similarly multiple definitions. Scholars can focus on awareness of beliefs/strategies about language, (ie. reflexivity) or on language as a form of power (ie. hegemony). So, the field itself is constituted by its contexts.

Materiality is seen as an important distinction. I think this focus on materiality would be a worthwhile perspective for me to take. Rather than the Cartesian perspective that suggests VWs as worlds of pure thought, of leaving one's fleshly body behind, a media perspective would focus on how the technology enables interaction/meaning-making/etc. Because media systems are designed, we can draw attention to the gap (perceived or actual) between the intention of the media system and its actual use.

Media systems also have characteristics that are worth looking at separately from language or semiotic ideologies. Repetition/recordings, for example. Authorship is also an issue. Goffman makes a distinction between the author, animator, and principal - the author who writes the words, the animator who speaks them, and the principal who takes responsibility for them.

"Remediation." The relationships between different media. Perceptions about how they are used: ie. phone calls are more personal than text messages. Using one media means you are not using another media. Using one media means you are not using another media. What does it mean to play MMOGs rather than other games? To communicate on Vent rather than on the phone? To meet your friends in-game rather than in the real world? New media requires you to reevaluate your media ideologies all the way back to voice - ie. co-present vocal communication.

Euro-American language ideologies privilege 'referentiality', which Bauman and Briggs (2003, Voices of Modernity) link to Bacon, Locke and efforts to create a perfectly referential (and grammatically logical) language. One-to-one referentiality in language links in to the 'two-worlds' concept. Language is immanent and inconsistent. If we could only lock down language to referencing the pure things behind it, then philosophy could resolve its problems. Pure language is a panacea to the Western problematic. Language ideologies questions this goal by demonstrating that language is always subjective.

The Media Ideologies perspective could be a useful one for me to adopt. I am looking at VWs and MMOGs more as media than as places. Boellstorff reimagines telephones and ham radios as 'virtual worlds', perhaps we could also imagine MMOGs as a form of media.

What would be the consequences of considering MMOGs as media? It draws communication to the forefront rather than place-making. 'Ideologies' draws subjectivities to the front, as well as hegemonies. The focus on materiality is important. What is the influence of the MMOG structure (all the way down to the server) on communication? It puts MMOGs in the lineage of writing, recordings and television rather than board games and computer games.