Sociology + The Internet = Silly
While it no doubt sounds snarky, I find this kind of “research” quite silly. Boyd, whose popularity I still find puzzling (Why is she so popular? Based on what output? Has she joined the ranks of “faculty” yet?), did get a lot of unfair critiques already on her blog accusing her of being racist and whatnot, so I’ll just say a few things here as to not contribute to these attacks which have nothing to do with what I briefly what to say.
There is a rhetoric to the kind of work Boyd engages with, most of which takes the cliché and turns it into an astute observation. The most active clichés in this short blog essay center around the essentialist behaviors individuals may or many participate it (Do all members of X group really do the same thing?), the usage of the words “hegemonic” and “subaltern,” and the notion that an “observation” qualifies for an assessment.
For instance, I would be interested in knowing - given what the words “hegemonic” and “subaltern” mean - how a teenager is either hegemonic or subaltern. True, early cultural studies work labeled anyone who put an earring in a part of their body that is not the ear, or who took something (a shirt, a board, a pin) and used it in a way not intended, “subaltern.” Such studies also made every act of pleasure or enjoyment one of resistance despite the lack of evidence that any situation was being resisted (or in the over-glamorized world of hip-hop delivered by Tricia Rose and others, that the “resistance” was not a drive to join the dominant). But given how hegemony works, how do teenagers instill it in any kind of situation? Being rich (and Boyd offers no evidence that any users of MySpace or Facebook are rich or poor) as a teenager does not mean one is hegemonic. Hegemony is an institutional situation. Teenagers do not create and maintain power structures. They may be born into such structures, but they don’t sustain them (regardless of how and where they shop; being a shopper is not a hegemonic power; if anything, the traditional argument is that one is being subjected to hegemony via shopping patterns).
But Boyd’s blog essay gets a bit sillier.
People often ask me if I’m worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it’s not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I’m very worried about the stress that they’re under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I’m worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I’m worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I’m worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.
All of this soap-box preaching from comparing MySpace to Facebook. Such a passage reads like a first year textbook writing assignment, which typically is taught as cliché : compare and contrast two online writing platforms and how they do X or Y. Facebook kids have unrealistic desires to be rich and famous? Because I am on MySpace, I am ostracized? I’m going to “lash back at the hegemonic values of society” whatever that hegemony (as if there is only one) might mean (Boyd never defines what is this hegemonic situation). Can Boyd really believe such a thing?
Come on. Does sociology - or at least, sociology of the Web - have to be this under-theorized and this silly? Is this the CNN/Entertainment Tonight equivalent for academia? Generalize and essentialize?
Thanks for this reading of Boyd’s work. I haven’t been following the conversation around it too closely (because of focusing on my thesis), but this is perhaps the smartest response I’ve read.
Comment by Michael Faris — July 2, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
And what’s the step after the thesis? PhD program?
Comment by jrice — July 2, 2007 @ 6:01 pm
Yes. I’ve applied to a one-year instructor position here at OSU for the 07-08 year (crossing fingers), and then I’ll be applying to PhD programs for the following year.
Comment by Michael Faris — July 2, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
I was going to leave a very thoughtful response, but I was just reminded that I need to check my MySpace inbox to see what my posse is up to for the holiday.
Comment by Zac — July 3, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
I think you’re right about a lot of aspects of the piece, particularly in your strong criticism of that extended passage. At the same time, though, I guess I’m inclined to be somewhat charitable to the piece, particularly given how she qualifies it:
She’s thinkin out loud. I wrote plenty of dumb stuff about what I was trying to figure out while I was writing and blogging my diss, but writing it helped me figure out smarter stuff. I kinda see what she’s doing as the same thing, and she gets linked to by the right people.
I do think she’s spot-on with that brief section on the military, but — as you say — the observations she makes are ones that are fairly obvious.
Comment by Mike — July 3, 2007 @ 7:04 pm
This dismissiveness is surprising, even–or especially–at yellowdog. I found it so puzzling that, upon returning to the entry above, I wondered if the dismissiveness is not more toward Boyd’s status as not-yet-faculty, or (even more likely) toward the work’s focus on youth culture. I do take the point about the seeming outdatedness of terms like hegemony, but early-stage ethnographic research isn’t always at sharpest edge of theoretical terms–and in fact good ethographic research probably shouldn’t begin at that edge. Instead these clunky-to-our-ears concepts read to me as coding categories, placeholders that call for refinement as she mines the data.
So I agree with Mike about the purpose of Boyd’s blog essay, though others in the comments over there have wondered why she would offer citation instructions if this is in fact thinking-out-loud stuff. Probably because people yank things off the internet no matter what.
But back to the point, I think Boyd’s research (the broader research, not this particular essay necessarily) is really interesting and much-needed. Maybe this is b/c in the past two years I’ve learned so much about what goes on in comm departments, besides rhetorical studies, which really forms the tiniest of corners these days. I have tons of colleagues working on knowledge networks and social networks using quantitative research–numbers do talk in a lot of circles–and it’s not only cool but pretty useful.
I read this particular piece of Boyd’s as a kind of attempt to skim off broad observations and hold on to them while working through data (the ‘missing’ data that commenters are crying foul about). Now maybe a public blog post isn’t the place for that, but maybe it is. For example, the point from the teacher at the dominantly African American school that notes how Myspace and Facebook aren’t the sites of choice seems a really important point for Boyd to bear in mind as she conducts her research, selects her schools, etc.
And also the reflection on methodology at the end is useful.
Finally, does admitting that something sounds snarky make it less so?
Them’s my cents.
Comment by dhawhee — July 4, 2007 @ 7:53 am
It was snarky. But that snarkiness is also related to what I see as bad research. In my reading of her essay, you can hear my interests in Latour and network theory.
The question of “observation” as analysis or understanding is quite problematic. Blog post or not - and while I appreciate the “thinking out loud” I am familiar with her other writings since they only appear online - in this type of research, so much is left out.
As someone very much interested in and working with networks, is the observation that X group uses Y and Y group uses X indicative of a network? I say no. Everything we know about networks speaks against such simplifications.
There is also a larger issue here as well regarding race and class studies. And I’d say that the simplification of race and class to X group does Y and Y group does X is the most problematic towards any understanding of either category. No truer has this been than for how African American culture and technology are often situated. Usually, that situation is as simplistic as Boyd’s reading of MySpace and Facebook: “African Americans are not online.” But that statement is absolutely untrue. Its repetition often re-enforces cultural stereotypes. The broader implications for such stereotypes (whether based on race or class) can be appreciated for their long term political ramifications.
Given my own desire to see cultural situations read in the complex ways that they often are, I don’t think, Debbie, you should be surprised at my response. If one really wants to understand cultural phenomenon (if, that is, such understanding is possible since networks, as I think Latour shows so well in Aramis are incredibly complex to understand), reductive categories like the ones Boyd constructs (not to mention the mis-usage of terms like hegemony) are not gong to be much help other than to reconfirm what we already feel (X group is oppressed).
My two cents is that that such a methodology does little but to advance what we want to feel and think. But, then again, I think that this is the path much of cultural studies and critical pedagogy has taken anyway.
Comment by jrice — July 4, 2007 @ 9:01 am