The Plant Gave It to Me: Economics and Nature

For many years, it has been easy to value natural resources at zero. Even though we began to see our negative impact on the natural environment in the 1960s, we have failed to take into consideration nature as both a cost and value. Over the past forty years, this has changed a great deal, and gradually, nature is being recognized in economic theory as a significant factor.

What were the reasons for nature to be ignored? One of the easiest to point out is our distinction between culture and nature. Economic activity has been viewed as a cultural activity. While the context and much of the natural resources have been viewed as outside culture and consequently outside economic activity. As early as 1974, these limitations were being recognized and included economic calculations. E.F. Schumacher used this as his basis for his distinction between "economics" and "meta-economics." The latter being the context for which all economic activity takes place.

While in economics, the natural environment was gradually being recognized as both an ignored factor and additionally, a devalued ethical concern, one forward-thinking German writer was already recognizing "nature" as an economic factor at the fin de siècle. Kurd Lasswitz, a writer known for his contribution to early science fiction, realized that the natural world played a fundamental role in economic success. In his novel, Star-Dew: A Plant from Neptune's Moon (1909), the plant gives a "gift" to humans of a chemical compound that can be used to make a flexible, yet durable material - similar to what we call plastic. By framing the plant compound he calls "rorin" as a "gift," he recognizes that the plant's contribution may not be able to be concretely valued, but that it nonetheless has value. The function of "gift" also attributes an agency of sorts to the ones who give the gifts, while not calling it a human agency. The plants become as persons, but not persons.

Lasswitz' concept of plants as economic factors anticipates in many ways Matthew Hall's argument in Plants as Persons. Although he does not claim that plants are intelligent and sentient in the same way that humans are, he does argue for a view of plants that gives them a similar status to humans. If we can do that for corporations, why not for other non-humans. This improved status may be the final impetus to include plants and other non-human and even the non-living resources in our economic equations.

NDP: Win A Date with Tom Mulcair!

The NDP`s latest fundraising campaign offers a chance to watch a hockey game with Tom Mulcair, if you donate as little as 5 dollars to the party. While Tommy may be not as much a draw as say Trudeau for a date, it would still be interesting to sit and grill him about his plans for the party for a couple of hours and make him buy you beer and hot dogs for the exhorbitant arena prices. I have two questions about the campaign. First, why am I ignoring the emails? Second, I wonder how he feels about the whole thing.



I signed up to receive emails from the NDP, so that I could receive updates from the party. Instead, they function as a platform for a big, red "donate now" button. I stopped reading them because the information they send is essentially useless for me and they send far too many of them. I suspect for every forty people like me who views these emails as flies buzzing in my inbox, there is one person who will donate on the tenth email in seven days (I may be exaggerating on the amount of emails - this is my feeling of the frequency). If we follow the law of averages, the more people you contact the more likely they will donate. Great! Simple formula.



Or slightly incorrect. For people like me, who aren't inclined to donate willy nilly and get annoyed at the clutter in my inbox, the amount of emails may actually be impacting their perception of the party and may have some further negative consequences far beyond the reach of the campaign. I place my vote based on the party platforms. What if I were to get so irritated at the fundraising tactics that this would bias my interpretation of the platform to the extent I would see otherwise positive goals to actually be negative. How do you fundraise without turning people off from the cause?
 

I don't have a ready answer to that but I do know that this may be fine line to cross.

As for my second question, I am sure that Tommy - may I call you that? - enjoys spending time with a complete stranger who won some contest by donating five dollars to the campaign. Maybe he looks forward to getting to know someone new over a bonding experience like hockey. Dear Tommy I hope you have a great blind date and I hope that the campaign was worth the date.



On a side note, this campaign has been part of a larger effort to connect with a younger demographic. Their previous effort to engage young voters with the "pick the best sticker" campaign is another example. "I heart NDP?" Really? I suggest that they may have more success if they dressed Tommy in a flannel shirt and got him to wear a toque. They're already halfway there...

Ambivalent Motives: A Backlash Against the "Caring" Insurance Company

I don't watch the super bowl, but I ended up watching the "dead boy" commercial (and hearing my neighbours cheer every time someone scored a goal). Nationwide insurance wanted attention. That much is clear. Why else pay for a commercial spot during the super bowl. If this was their sole aim, they have succeeded on that point. Out of all the ads aired during the super bowl, theirs has received the most buzz on twitter and elsewhere.

But, and here is the big but: the response has been largely negative. Why? Because their motives appear ambivalent. Are they airing a commercial because they care about preventing drowning? Or, do they have a more nefarious purpose? One more closely aligned with the central purpose of ad space, selling or promoting a product. After the storm around the ad had already started to rage, Nationwide stepped up to the microphone and claimed that they cared. They were simply trying to start a conversation.

Yet judging from the twitter storm, many believe that they were trying to promote their product on the graves of innocent children. A rather unsettling association to say the least, and I would guess, not the conversation they were intending to start.

Part of the problem stems from the ad itself. Not only does it play on a person's heartstrings (most people do not want children to die, especially a sweet, lovely child like the one on screen), but it also uses the device of a surprise reveal that emphasizes the negative emotions. It is only at the end of the commercial that we learn why the child will never learn to ride a bike, to fly, and to get cooties. The child drowned. The surprise reveal is a trick that acts as an intensification device. In the commercial, it emphasizes an extremely negative outcome that partially places the responsibility for that outcome on the viewers. Ouch. The viewer now feels like they've been tricked and they feel guilty for the child's drowning.

Besides for the heavy emotional content in the context of light entertainment, why would the most negative motive be the one many jump to first? If google is any indicator of the widespread perception of insurance companies, it's not surprising that an insurance company is associated with say, "evil" or "scam" or "crooked." Those three extremely negative associations appear in the top five suggestions when you type in: "insurance companies are..."


Counteracting the negative perception of a company is one of the key motives behind initiating a public awareness campaign like this one here. Even though the company claims that they have been working with experts for more than 60 years to make homes safer, this is not the message that comes across. When designing the campaign, I don't think that the negative associations with insurance companies were taken seriously and addressed outright. The ad appeared to be the sheep's wool, hiding the wolf underneath.

A better strategy would have been to acknowledge the wolf. The ad could have begun with....

"Let's start a conversation about safety"
"We know our money can never compensate for a child's death"
"Meet..."

Then the original ad could have continued and perhaps the backlash would have been different.

Or not. Aren't insurance companies evil?

Why is technology blue?

Why is technology blue? A simple search for technology on Google images brings up a predominantly blue group of images. In the world we live in of extreme gender colour-coding, the first thought that comes to mind is that technology has been coded as masculine. But is this an accurate first impression?

A simple count of the number of male figures versus female figures in the image reveals that the majority associate male figures with technology, although there are a few female figures.

 

 This immediately leads to a second question. Is this merely a coincidence or do these images and the colour coding of technology as masculine reflect a reality within industries associated with technological innovations?

 

 Fortune magazine has compared the diversity numbers between the major tech companies and generally found them lacking. Just taking a look at the male-female ratio, the numbers are appalling. Indiegogo headed out the top of the list with 57% male and 43% female, while Apple with its uncharacteristically blue apple came in second with 72% male and 28% female. If the numbers only include technical workers, then the picture is decidedly more abysmal. Indiegogo still heads out the top with 33% female workers, but Apple's ratio of female workers drops to 20%. 

The question remains: what happened to Apple's previous rainbow coloured logo? Is that not a better ideal to strive for than a blue one?

The predominance of blue in images of technology is not the source of the gender disparity in the tech industry but rather a symptom of a larger issue. The industry seems to have been coded masculine just as other fields have been coded feminine such as education and pharmacy.








A biological basis for these differences have long been discounted, so the question of cultural conditioning remains. In a world that is more and more dominated by images, we seem to be subtly reinforcing norms within industries through the visual representations we choose. The answer isn't necessarily to code technology as pink - that would be just falling back into a mindset that excludes rather than includes.










The images we choose to represent a set of discourses as diverse as technology will change as our concept of technology and who is involved in determining it will change. I would hope that images like the one of the tree will be the reflection of our future. Such images speak to a growing awareness of the impact our changing technology has on our environment and on our neighbours.

Fans and Affect: Supernatural, Seinfeld and the Mad Scientist

When I was 9 years old, I had just started at a new school, in a new city and with new people. At that age, they still have show and tell in school. I could think of nothing else but to share my collection of the babysitter club books. I remember setting them down on the table at the front of the room and not much else.


I'm at the point of reconsidering one of my reoccurring narratives. I believe that I am not the type of person who can be considered a fan. I'm not fan because I don't throw myself wholeheartedly and unabashedly into anything - I'm not a fanatic. It's not in my character to be non-skeptical about anything. In everything I do, there is a moment of doubt, which I always associated with distance.

I'm beginning to realize that my image of fans have been very much associated with the negative representation of them in the media and also the rather hypocritical stance in academia that dictates fandom as unprofessional.

The negative representation of fans is pervasive and remarkably gendered. It harkens back to an old association of good ole Freud between women and hysteria. The fan is hysterical to the point of losing control of one's body and actions. One of the first representations of fans came alongside the Beatles' wave of popularity. The image of a Beatles' fan is overwhelming female and hysterical. Footage of the Beatles arriving a new place or venue is often accompanied by the image of a mass of female fans, crying and screaming. I was always fascinated by these images but could never identify with them. My public face is far too stoic to engage in mass emotion.

A more recent representation of the fan comes from the TV show, Supernatural. Supernatural has a complex relationship to its incredibly active fan base - a relationship that sometimes ends up appearing in the show, and even formed one of the threads for a season's narrative. I've only watched up to the 7th season, so I can't speak to later appearances of fans. The fans that appear in Supernatural are presented as defective in some manner. They are often losers, who have in some way a social deficit that they replace with Supernatural. Becky is a clear example of the female, hysterical fan, who uses the show as a replacement for her inadequate reality. She eventually tricks the character, Dean, into marrying her. Her neediness and love for the show are depicted as abnormal and even monstrous. While she redeems herself in the end by behaving correctly, it involves denying herself the life that she wants.

This is not to say that there are no examples of male fans. Another episode in Supernatural features two male fans at a fictional Supernatural fan conference. Yet, the two male fans are depicted as less attractive and less competent than the two main characters from the show.


Similarly, in an episode of Seinfeld called "The Facepainter" being too much of a fan is looked upon with derision. Although all characters of the show are often shown as being sports' fans, their involvement consists mainly of wearing merchandise or watching their team play. When Elaine's boyfriend paints his face and expresses excessive emotion at a game, this is considered to be abnormal behaviour and requires a correction on the part of the girlfriend. The joke on her is that he responds incompletely to her correction by channeling this emotion into another form.

Where are all the positive depictions of fans? Is this why I hesitate to identify as a fan, because I don't want to be stereotyped as one of those hysterical, female fans or as abnormal? Or is it just that I don't want to be considered unprofessional.



Most academics could probably be considered closet fans. I can't speak for other areas, but in the humanities, our research focus is shaped in some way by our personal interests. Identity and research are often bedfellows (but not always). Otherwise, I believe, it would be difficult to find the motivation to spend all that time thinking about it. Sometimes, it occurs the other way around. You'll have to spend time with a topic or author and then you become a fan of it.



I wonder sometimes that if the ant-intellectualism in the broader publics is in part fueled by what is considered an abnormal, obsessional quest for knowledge. Is not the mad scientist, the fan gone academic? He (and they are mostly hes) are the monstrous reflection of the academic who is driven by an obsessive quest for knowledge. The one difference between the fan and the mad scientist is that often the mad scientist is denied emotion to the point of being emotionally cold and inhuman. At other times, the emotional register is also extreme, cue the maniacal laughter...

To that little girl, who liked her books enough to share with the world. It's okay to be a fan.  It's also okay to dare for more than just checking off the "like it" box. To really love it, excessively.

Ford and Schadenfreude: I am not the essence of good.

Sometimes, I would call myself evil. Yes. Evil. Today, the monstrous me reared its head with ram's horns and mehyed. My evil self is also a goat who likes to eat ice cream every day and drink copious amounts of alcoholic cider.

I wasn't sad when they announced today that Rob Ford had a tumour. In fact, there was more than a glimmer of Schadenfreude. My first thought wasn't well wishes. I thought, "maybe, just maybe, this will keep him from campaigning and we won't have another 4 years of Ford." After announcing to my husband that Ford had a tumour, I also told him that I am evil. Unsurprised he answered, "that's not good."

I may have been evil in other situations. Or perhaps a better word for it would be antisocial. I so badly want to be that nice girl, when really I tend to more of an acerbic wit (and people wonder why I am so quiet - I just don't want to alienate everyone by saying what I really think).



There was a particular uncomfortable situation just two weekends ago when we went to pick up Oliver from his grandparents house. I have rather strong beliefs about food and I often disagree strongly about how they feed both Oliver and his cousin. Not to get into details, I bit my tongue until it turned blue and started to affect the colour of my face. I may have appeared hostile (while trying to seem nice), but at least I didn't confirm their suspicions of my evil nature. Or my conflicted nature - words cannot express my gratitude at having a week of being child-free (but that's for another post).



I suspect my mask of niceness is somehow linked with my obsession with what people think of me. It is starting to fade a bit as I get older, but it's still there. I want people to like me - I generally like them. That's why I don't outright tell people that they're bad parents, bad artists, or just generally off their rocker. Unfortunately I have a face like glass and they probably can tell anyways. Ooops.



It's also why I didn't approach Ford when I saw him on the street at the Cabbage town fest last weekend. I was afraid what would come out of my mouth and also afraid he would brush off the criticism with his own blind delusions of grandeur (not to be confused with the French word for large). Besides, he had a little group of admirers circling around his own orbit and reinforcing his deluded sense of self. It's no wonder.

Hidden Hate: A Supposed Non-Conformist Confirms Traditional Gender Roles

I'm appalled and I feel betrayed. I continually attempt to think the best of the many Russian men I know and often disappointed by their beliefs regarding gender roles. This weekend I was confronted with a particularly heinous example. 

I married a Russian man with my eyes wide open and have been often impressed with his progressive views on femininity and masculinity. He sees nothing wrong with expressing affection for his son and performs various household chores. In essence, he is logical to the extreme and has a flexible mind, resulting in openness to otherness. Knowing him, I hope that other Russian men are capable of his strength and beauty.

I am often wrong. Sitting around the campfire this weekend, I expressed pride in the role he plays as an excellent and supporting husband and father. A Russian man responded, "so you're under her heel," in Russian so I wouldn't understand. At some other point, he also implied that my husband's loving behaviour toward his son is unmanly. On the drive home, my husband told me all of this as we were discussing the trip.

It's now clear to me why that Russian man repeatedly expresses wonder at the fact that a Canadian woman has married a Russian. Why would we want to be with a man, who thinks that his wife should do all the housework and take care of the kids while being the principle breadwinner. What is his contribution to the relationship and to the home. And more importantly, how can he declare that he's a non-conformist, when he clearly conforms to century old misconceptions on the abilities and roles of women.

You may wonder why I have couched this in terms of Russian versus Canadian. I am not fond of generalizing, but gender and the cultural differences between Canadians and Russians is a topic that often comes up saddled with a rather ugly form of misogyny. Behind that surprise at a Canadian woman married to a Russian man is often the question of why would a Russian man be with a Canadian woman. Within an integrated Canadian society, Russian men have little of the same unjust rights and expectations that they would have in a segregated Russian community. 

Is that why so many Russian men living in Canada choose to be with Russian women? Do other cultures that have similar repressive views of women also mostly choose women who have been cultured to conform to their expectations?

In 2011, I watched the Russian film, Elena, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev that encapsulates the dominating perception of women in Russia. A business tycoon marries his nurse whose rights as a wife remain essentially the same as a housekeeper. When learning that she won't be provided for after he dies, she takes drastic measures out of desperation. Jim Hoberman opens his review of the film as a "vivid evocation [...] of Moscow’s contemporary society." 

While he focuses on the class divisions, there is also a limited image of gender identity. The two main female roles, the nurse-wife and the tycoon's daughter, represent two main stereotypes of women in Russian society. One sees women as subservient to men and expected to take care of all the household duties. The other sees women as extremely attractive playgirls, whose purpose in life is to spend their husband/father's money. Another smaller voice whose power is equivalent to her class is evoked in the wife of the nurse's son. Her unplanned pregnancy and dependence on her mother-in-law's handouts reflects the lack of power she has over her body and her finances.



The encounter I had this weekend with one man's derogatory view of equality in praxis confirms for me that feminism is far from being a dead issue. I feel I have no choice but to become an ironic man-hater. As Jess Zimmerman, the editor of the magazine Medium explains, "It's inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it's ridiculous."  Maybe the only way to fight misogyny is with irony.