The Brief Life of “Squeezy”

I squelched the brief life of an emergent signifier today.
I feel a bit bad about doing so, which perhaps inspires me to blog about it… and thus at the very least create an archival record of the brief life and death of the very evocative word: “squeezy”.

This word is one that I have noticed my son using for some time (not sure when it first entered into his vocabulary). In fact, I was not entirely clear what he meant when I first heard him use it (which in part is what brought it to the attention of my consciousness).

Today may be the beginning of the end for “squeezy”, however, as I authoritatively stepped in and eliminated it from his vocabulary by suggesting a “correct” alternative. Here is an account of the events:

The animals (of which there were about 18… in plastic toy form) were fighting the dinosaurs (who were bigger and stronger, but out numbered about 2-to-1). This was happening on the floor, in the middle of our family room (I was sitting to the side, marking exams, trying to keep out of the battle). The fight, according to my son, was taking place in the middle of the road, making the road “squeezy” and nearly impassible to some of his larger (toy) busses and cars. He proceeded to demonstrate (“look daddy, look daddy”) how the road became more and more squeezy as the animals and dinosaurs closed in on one another in close combat.

A Very Squeezy Situation

At this point, I stepped in to explain that the word he wanted was “narrow”… the road was “narrow” not “squeezy”. He took a few moments, contemplating this, then smiled, moving the dinosaurs and animals yet closer together. “Look daddy, it’s more narrower!”

Children are a wonderful agents in the production of linguistic (and more broadly cultural) diversity. It is a bit sad that we have to constantly reign in their creative energies – in order that linguistic complexity not devolve in to sheer chaos.

Persistently Non-Political

A friend from the United States emailed yesterday and asked, among other things, if I had any thoughts on introducing for classroom teaching issues related to the current elections over on that side of the world. She is teaching an intro to anthropology course (as I am) and as she put it, wants the students to engage in discussion of these things, but to introduce it in a non-partisan way. I don’t think I have much advice for her, but at least it is a way to introduce this blog entry…

I woke up this morning again to more US election nonsense on the BBC. Last week it was the nonsense about unwed teenage pregnancy (yes, that should be nobody’s business – except as Bill O’Reily legitimately points out, if the public is expected to pay for it (for the source of this see link to ‘gross hypocrisy’ below) and/or, as I would point out, insofar as it should be “exhibit A”" that “abstinence only sex education” espoused as policy for all American children DOES NOT WORK… furthermore, the issue in this regard is NOT so much pregnancy and abortion as it is the public health issue of sexually transmitted diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS… but I digress). This week the important issue is nonsense about porcine cosmetics and the deep sexism espoused by America’s number one uppity Negro. Given that these are the issues, it is a good thing that this campaign is not about issues.

I think my friend who lives on the left-hand coast of the United States has the same dilemma I have (her in the classroom; I with this blog). We both have this elections on our mind because it is daily fare in the media of our lives. I’ve been incredibly fortunate, in my own estimation, to have lived the majority of my adult life outside of America, and thus largely immune to the gross hypocrisy and unending nonsense of American politics. But every four years, like a plague of locusts, America’s silly season becomes difficult to avoid.

It is obvious from the posts in this blog that things going on in America’s election cycle are a point of reference for things I think about. But following one of the bright lights of social commentary here in Singapore, I want to assure and assert that this is and will remain a persistently non-political blog. To anyone reading what I have posted to date, it should not be too difficult to figure out where my general political sympathies lie in the American scheme of things. But I really want this blog to be about matters more related to teaching and research; and really do not want this to become a space for political rants.

That said, I certainly think that current affairs are an important subject matter to draw on in teaching about culture and society. How one does this, without being sucked into deeply divisive partisanship, I’m not so sure.

Hmmm… that all is just the tiniest fraction of thoughts gnawing at my mind this morning. But, I’m going to leave it at that for this post.

Culture’s Deep Currents

Culture involves deep currents of symbolic meaning. One imporant point in learning and understanding how culture operates is that anything we say, anyway in which we communicate with others, is bound up in these systems of meaning. They enable our communication; but they also constrain what we can say because we have to operate within the system as given (the system changes, but we cannot change it by fiat; rather only through discourse – which no single person ‘controls’). Symbolic complexity is also the basis for mis-communication and ambiguity. Here is my latest example (in a political rant sent to a couple friends; the main point here is in the last paragraph):

“I don’t want to be mean, but, let me put it this way…

 

Obama and Bidden are running against a crotchety old Vietnam-war vet whose running mate is a clueless beauty queen with a knocked-up teenage daughter.

 

Can the Democrats seriously lose this year?

 

That’s all I could think of when I woke up to the latest on the Sarah Palin fiasco this morning.

 

I know that portrayal is deeply unfair to McCain-Palin (even if I am not a fan of their politics). But that seems to be the ‘archetype’ or stereotype of Americana that they seem to be falling into (just as Obama has had to prove to white folks that he is King and not Malcom… the other night, he did that in spades – to use a deeply inappropriate metaphor).

 

Why does so much of the English language have to be so complexly interwoven with the tragic history of racism? For example, the other day as I was watching Barack give his speech, right at the end when the confetti was exploding all over the stage, my five-year old daughter came in. She looked at the tv and asked “who won”? (It DID look like a sporting event, after all.) I laughed and told her “Barack Obama” – pointing him out on the screen. We had a fairly long Q-and-A session about this (of the sort one has with a five year old… her endless stream of questions; my fruitless attempts to find answers that do not lead to another “Why?”). In the course of this, she found ”Barack Obama” to be a completely incomprehensible tongue-twister. In the course of the Q-and-A, she finally settled on a moniker for our soon to be President of the United States of America… “Barry Banana” (closest word she knows to “Obama”). I think it is great – utterly hiliarious. Plus, she thinks “Barry Banana” is really wonderful. But then, there is a little nagging voice in the back of my mind remembering ugly episodes involving banana peels tossed and waved at black athletes when I was a little boy growing up in Kansas. And I fret that anyone hearing my daughter and I joking around about “Barry Banana” will take this totally, totally the wrong way. Grrrrr… can’t we all get over it and once and for all relegate racist bullshit to the dustbin of history? Sigh.”

A 4-Year Old on Race: It Ain’t So Black and White

Last March, while I was watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, my 4-year old son joined me. The first time he looked at the TV, he asked “Is that Uncle Alex?”

Uncle Alex a friend and lecturer here in Singapore. He’s from Uganda originally (but went to the same College as I did in Minnesota).

 

On a trip back to the US in June I picked up an Obama ‘08 t-shirt (wearing it today, which reminded me of this). When I first wore it, my son stared and stared at it.

“Who is that?” I asked. To be honest, I was thinking of the basketball episode.

“Uncle Scott!” he said emphatically.

Uncle Scott, another friend and lecturer, is from Michigan and in American culture just as lily-white as me.

Children are wonderful.

Click here for a few more thoughts on the race thing.

Associated…

For the record, my promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure (until 65) came through this month. The contract (until 2032) is still sitting on my desk, but the new status is already more or less official.

Some stuff I’ve done…

In the course of typical obsessive bureaucratic auditing culture that is part and parcel of the life of a working academic, I have just been subject to a series of queries by institutional powers-that-be probing me for an accounting of my academic and employment history (why the mysterious employment ’gap’ in 1993-1995? … anthropologists should be able to figure that one out). This led me to create the following list. So here, for the record and to the best of my memory, is everything (or at least the highlights of everything) I recall since high school and up to joining NUS in December 2001.

Academic and Employment History

 

Academic History (Degree Programs; Secondary School onward)

1985 – Graduated Manhattan High School, Manhattan, Kansas, USA

               National Merit Scholar (awarded scholarship to Macalester College)

1989 – Graduated Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota, USA

               BA with Majors in Anthropology and Philosophy

               Graduated magna cum laude (equivalent to a high Second Upper in the British System)

               Admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa (society of fellows based on academic excellence)

1993 – Awarded Master Degree/Ph.C. (Candidate for PhD), Department of Anthropology, University of Washington (Seattle), USA

2000 – Awarded PhD, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington (Seattle), USA

 

Academic History (Certificate Programs)

1989 – Nursing Assistant Certification, Washington State, USA

1996 – Japan Times / Wollongong University Certification in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

 

Academic History (Other)

1991 – Academic Honors (awarded to top students on comprehensive exams), Department of Anthropology, University of Washington

1992 (Summer) – National Science Foundation Pre-Dissertation Fieldwork Grant

1993 – 1994 – Blakemore Foundation Scholarship for Advanced Language Study (undertaken at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

1994 – 1995 – Fulbright Research Scholar, Malaysia

 

Employment History (Some positions held concurrently)

1985 – 1989 – Student assistant, mainly in the Department of Anthropology, Macalester College

1985 and 1986 (Summers) – Research Assistant, Microbiology Laboratory, Kansas State University

1985 (Summer) – Busboy, Raoul’s Mexican Restaurant, Manhattan, Kansas

1987 – 1989 – Personal Care Attendant (Assistant to Severely Handicapped Individuals), St. Paul, Minnesota

1987 – Tutor, Department of Anthropology

1989 (Summer) – Taxi Driver, St. Paul, Minnesota

1989 – 1991 – Nursing Assistant, Greenwood Nursing Home, Seattle, Washington

1991 – Research Assistant for Debra Boyer, NIH Grant on Teen Pregnancy

1992 – 1993 – Teaching Assistant, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington (Seattle)

1995 – 1997 – English Instructor, Tokyo Center for Language and Culture, Tokyo, Japan

1998 – 2000 – Teaching Assistant & Lead Teaching Assistant, University of Washington (Seattle)

1999 – 2000 – Intern and Southeast Asia Research Coordinator, National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, Washington, USA

2000 – 2001 – Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

2001 – Present – Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

 

 

Long May You Run…

I put on some Neil Young today – Decade – and when it came to “Long May You Run” it brought back the memory of the kids dancing to this tune in Gillman Heights. An nice homage to the Gillman Heights diaspora as well. Most of our friends from there are now scattered around Singapore or further afield… but still, we have the memories…

http://www.youtube.com/v/P_NqVLK28ZU

Evolve or die…

Evolve or die. I cry uncle. I will now blog. It is the way of the world.

I am entering the blogosphere. Make of it what you will.