Hiding racism in the workplace

The main premise of the two articles are, that the seemingly equality-seeking practices of the professional fields are in other ways enhancing the inequality. Amy Slaton takes engineering education as the case where the UIC accepted minority students inclusively for entrance, but systematically excluded them from becoming professionals by not changing the existing standards in the curriculum. Though the justification for such open exntrance policy was to have more variety and thus train more competent professionals, it turned out the opposite. In Avery Gordon's piece, he criticizes the 'diversity management' practice in the corporate 'culture', which was a shift from the previous affirmative action paradigm. Though this paradigm was implemented to overcome affirmative action's limits such as the assimilation rule, it shows its own limits by assuming that diversity can be managed, and ultimately justifying racist outcomes such as stereotyping as well as a return to assimilation.

In any case, the very effort of the management or institution to separate unequal conditions such as race, class and gender actually contribute to strengthening it by making it look 'neutral' - and by this, hiding the clearly existing connections. This premise is linked to the main argument of this class: the need to uncover hidden systems in labor. Complicated as it may be, the stratifications among various lines and the interaction among them that result in inequity should be revealed, acknowledged and remedied as it is.

However, balacing it out with the professional need for efficiency is another thing. As mentioned in the texts, even equality is only pursued in those fields because it contributes for more (sometimes long-run) efficiency. How can be the uncoveing of hidden labor practices and systems be justified in terms of efficiency? Or how can it replace that firmly existing discourse? A large question to ask, but a crucial problem to think of if these discussions are to spread beyond the academic table.

On Sorting Things Out...

Bowker and Star's emphasis on the importance of categorization in Sorting Things Out reminded me strongly of Foucault's description on the history of 'madness'. The power to name things is the first step for control, and thus it is important to look into the history of the knowledge to uncover the truth about the governance structure we are embedded in. In his vein, the authors argue that categorization is ubiquitous and crucial in the human society (And indeed, formal knowledge in our modern westernized world is all about classification). In part I, they go over the system and history of ICD in great lengths to prove this point, while in part IV they cover the actual work of categorization. Ironically, the main argument of the authors is that those categories are never as solid or uniform as they seem.

One interesting thing that struck me the most is the crucial role invisibility of the classification work plays in the power of the categories. In the various 'hidden' labor we have been dealing with during this semester, their labor was hidden for the benefit of the others. However, in this case the classification labor can benefit itself by staying in the shadow. The more hidden it stays, the more power the classification gets, so to say. But what about the struggle to bulid new standards of classification? I would assert that a challenging party gains more power by publicly uncovering the hidden classifications. Is it the dynamic that the once the challenging classification chooses to go back to the shadows after it has become the leading principle?

Also, the notion of the Aristotelean and prototypical categories was a intersting subject. Though we imagine to achieve the former, the actual outcomes are closer to the latter. One thing, though, I would like to ask is how the prototypes are set. Aren't the prototypes actually some forms of ideals that have sprung out from relational concepts, as the French structualists have argued? It sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem, but maybe the real important thing is that the very aspiration of the current paradigm of classification to achieve some form of 'Aristotelean' categories.

History of VCR, User Culture

On reading Greenberg's account on the history of the VCR, I was pleasantly surprised that the whole process closely resembled what I have seen with the rise of the Internet. First, the technology is here. Then come the handful of enthusiastic people who find out new ways of use which is mediated among them into a new user culture. These unexpected novelty pisses off the bigger corporations, and they in turn attempt to restrict the technology and its specific use patterns through what they are good at: law and money. But at the same time, they quickly go about finding new ways to make commercial profit of the new user culture. And before you notice it, the commercialized 'system' becomes the default.

I completely agree on Greenberg's point that this whole process cannot be explained without looking into the in-between spaces and players. It is rather an interaction between technology, corporates, regulatory systems, and the complicated mixture of actual users. This interaction is the clue that leads to the answers of why some technologies are selected while others are dismissed. Why did the Laserdisc, which was more compliant to the aspirations of the movie corporates (e.g. better resolution, no wear-out for multiple playbacks, cannot duplicate) miserably fail to replace the VCR? The 'recording' function that connected the users closer to the TV culture and content sharing. Then why did the same concept succeed after a decade with the DVD? Probably (though not the sole reason) because the user culture itself had changed in some ways, incorporating experiences from other media such as the CD and Video game consoles.

But it calls for a practical question. Can the user culture - which is a sort of dialectic result between the (company) proposed use and (user) desired use - be effectively analyzed or even predicted? Is it the crucial driving force itself or should it rather be regarded as a surprise/noise factor that bring about the unexpected in the course of the history of media technology? Maybe a modification of Lessig's content regulating modalities (law, market, norms, architecture) would be useful, where a specific technology is socially selected by laws, markets, norms and 'user-culture'.