Lessons learned from movements

Giugni’s piece brings up a point we’ve talked about before, social movements and identity.
Going to the Occupy MBTA demonstration 2 weeks ago was an example of a group of people that identified somehow as a greater Boston-area citizen that would be put out by the proposed changes in the MBTA’s services. The fact that there was a wide range of ages, genders, and races protesting means the movement isn’t focused on one type of person (say women) identifying with the cause.

I think the fact that you can no longer say “occupy” without it having certain connotations is a huge impact that is a result of all the movements around the nation, and Giugni mentions the “spillover” effect, and I think that is what a lot of these occupy movements are. Since the first Occupy Wall-street movement, several other Occupy movements have sprung up, not as a response but as a result of people seeing others taking a stand on something they are unhappy about. I think OWS opened up the floodgates for people who did not realize that a bunch of people who want to make a change don’t need a single leader but merely need to get together to let their dismay be heart, and I think Giugni makes a good point about that. Winning over the public with Occupy movements is the first step towards making a bigger change or leaving behind a legacy.

Giugni also mentions that he does not believe the direct impact of the Occupy Movement will be substantial, and I have to agree with the notion that such broad movements all under the umbrella term of “occupying something” does not really give off the impression of a movement that will make one big dent in what needs to be changed. However, I do think that several small dents in the system is still an important thing. Getting the idea out that “occupying” can do something and making it culturally relevant to people means that it can have an impact later. All the dents will add up…

Culture, Media and Women

On Marco Giugni’s piece.

I saw his focus on cultural impacts and long-term indirect impacts as incredibly valuable points!  While reading his piece I was yet again reminded of the book I read for my book report, Power in Movement.  In it, the author writes that movement outcomes are rarely as radical as they were intended to be.  This is because the movement’s claims are get filtered through the mainstream and through the government.  The book argues that if a movement wants a policy change, by the time it comes around, the original desired change will have been diluted.

Politics is important.  Not for each individual piece of legislation or politician that slides across the marbled steps of a capitol building, but for the precedent that it sets for populations to come.  In a similar way, movements are so crucial for their ability to provide “fertile ground for what could come later.”

I initially thought that the Giugni piece and the Pastor, Ito and Rosner piece were in conflict with one another.  One emphasizes the long-term indirect cultural change while the other emphasizes present measurements.  However, when I got more deeply in to the parts describing measurements of transformation, I realized they complement each other.

This piece talks of new media as an add-on (high-tech does not equal high touch).  With new media developing rapidly, can these thorough metrics keep up with it?

I also have a question about who the audience is and what comes after a document like this?  When and how does it get put in to effect?

I recently read an article by Jael Silliman about NGOs.  She wrote about how the importance of receiving funding (and showing accountability) ends up driving NGO actions and behaviors more than their initial mission.  She warns about the co-optation of NGOs and writes about how some people are pushing back against the heavy-business-oriented efforts of NGOs.  Furthermore, some governments get too involved with NGOs and interfere too much with their missions.  Networks have formed among NGOs and lead to complications because of the centralization of decision-making and monopolization of resources that occurs.

Measuring movements and measuring NGOs are two different tasks yet they are related.  I could not help connecting the two readings and get concerned about some of the emphases that the metrics paper made on evidence for funding.  Some of my concerns were addressed, for instance on page 8-9 one participant is quoted as saying that it is the “mission that determines the path – not the metrics.”

Finally, I would like to ask the question, “What is a women’s movement?”

Is it different and if so, how?  How is it characterized?  How are men involved?  Is the way you measure outcomes different?  The readings talk about the impacts on the individual activists involved in movements.  So how would a women’s movement impact individuals differently or similarly?  Can part of the measurement of transactions and transformations include women specifically?

This site lists some successful women’s movements from 2011.  However, I would argue that these are not each movements but are individual instances that are perhaps part of a broader women’s movement.  Successful instances (according to this site from the Global Fund for Women) from all over the globe include:

Uruguay on the Cusp of Legalizing Abortion

Gender Equality Cemented into Moroccan Constitution

Egyptian Court Bans Virginity Tests

European Women Win Domestic Violence Treaty

The Awakening Voice

The Giugni and Pastor articles both seem to address the question long/short-term effects on movements and activists. The comments and observations are based on the emergence of social movement’s social media channel. Yet, social movements before the internet have always flourished because of or in spite of funding, not commitment. The difference seems to be the nature of personal intensity and commitment. Before the internet, the “true believer”. Those of us with some personal perspective remember the civil rights and women’s movements as social movements without the internet. They were motivated or propelled by the “true believer”. Indeed, Marco Giugni comments on the personal consequences of social movement activism.

When I lived in Washington, DC (20 years), I became involved in the women’s movement as a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights. It was comprised almost entirely of “true believers” as was the Commission. In one case, I was providing Federal support to the litigation team undertaking the UniRoyal case. I eventually met the chief complainants, the aggrieved parties. While all were very much, “true believers” each commented on the arduous nature of the journey. Thus, at least in my experience, I can understand and accept Marco Giugni’s insight.

Recently, however, one senior Middle Eastern Ambassador, commenting on Syria, provided a somewhat troubling insight. He thought that the effectiveness of the internet in the Middle East was largely due to its rapid development and deployment. As authoritarian regimes learn how to control public speech, it’s “cutting edge” character might become less attractive. Indeed, this may already be happening in many places, including China and Russia. Even the UK has arrested those who used the internet to promote social protest!

Pastor’s article brings to mind the importance of group affiliation. He considers the many elements of organizing: transaction meetings, Individual shifts (transformations), civic engagements, etc. As you all know it is possible to map some of those affiliations in order to develop an understanding of the power of organizing and/or engagement. Thus, the ability to develop alliances — other groups and fund sources — becomes key to organizational success. Pastor covers a number of the data metrics which we have already discussed and seem so very relevant to his call for data metrics.

While Pastor’s call for organizing metrics is important, so too is evaluation: “Build the Movement Metric Toolbox.” Finding meaning in the data has been tried in many venues and can help understand the broader context of the data metrics. His reference to Frame Analysis is familiar territory and an example of movement analysis. I would look forward to a discussion of the merits of analytic/statistical tools. Indeed, there are many tools from which to choose.

One area of organizing that I have personally experienced is union organizing. Every union has a professional cadre of organizers who are super managers of union actions. At the request of the Communication Workers of America, I designed and installed their first Web host for organizing. It was so provocative that I assumed that it would always be subject to destructive hacking. Hence, I established it as a free-standing, non-connected host. It was comprised of a large Olivetti Mini Computer and a Cisco PIX — NAT firewall. In fact, there were three systems that were operating in parallel. When one went down — frequently — the second or third would be its replacement. Of course, we were always able to track the hacker(s). At the time, the prime hacker was AT&T since CWA was AT&T’s primary labor supplier. Since CWA members were deployed throughout AT&T, world-wide, it was very easy to identify the source — like “sleeping” with the enemy. Eventually, it became a playful game of hide and seek.

Based on what we had learned about AT&T’s very effective and somewhat invisible hacking, CWA developed an apprenticeship program on cyber security and incorporated its findings as yet another module in its apprenticeship training network — which I installed. Of course, AT&T staff were barred from attending. These two systems were and continue to be the primary organizing tools used by CWA. It is the only union that achieved “EDU” domain (TLD) status for its site. I remember when I visited Network Solutions offices in Virginia. No RL customer had ever visited, rather submitted domain requests via eMail. Network Solutions was the only DNS registry in the early 1980s. Office staff were shocked to see someone in their customer waiting room. When they indicated that NSF policy dictated that EDU domains were restricted to 4 year, degree-granting, accredited bodies, I asked them to read the bright yellow lettering on the 20 network engineers working in their offices: CWA surrounded by the crest of the American Federation of Labor (AFofL).

In summary, I think that we can look to union organizing to better understand a long-term organization that uses much the same methods for a smaller and well focused population of union members. The point is that each union has a very professional organizing department that is usually the largest component of the union.

Until the 1980s when CWA moved organizing to the digital domain of the internet, its tactics were just as effective without the internet. It now has a presence in most developed and some under developed countries.

Thus, we might want consider expanding Pastor’s observations to include union organizing and consider how the collected data metrics can be evaluated to best advantage from methodological and statistical perspectives

17 Questions for Livers and Kidneys

The Pastor, Ito, and Rosner 2011 article on integrating quantitative and qualitative metrics for social movements provoked numerous questions for me, in varying depth and breadth. Given the sheer number, rather than choose just one, here I present short descriptions of many. (For the most part they remain in the order triggered by the reading; I have eliminated questions from earlier sections that were answered in later sections.)

1. The executive summary reminds me of a business plan; would it be worth conceptualizing social movements as startups?
2. Seeking to learn from failure makes sense, but the idea of failure implicitly includes some unarticulated concept of measurement, no?
3. Does a divide between field and foundation really exist? Could this be a vestigial concept from resource mobilization theory that’s no longer relevant?
4. Can social/cultural change truly be arranged and scheduled within a corporate schema?
5. Social movements, like corporations, advertise—that is, offer persuasive argumentation in hopes of attracting members; but does the product (social goals) make this an inherently different kind of project?
6. The focus on impact and metrics makes me wonder, will this result in the development of commoditized/commoditizable “impact portfolios” akin to the “trauma portfolios” described in regard to human rights work in Haiti? (e.g., James 2010.)
7. The authors argue for “creating and developing a base of confident and skilled leaders among those individuals most affected by systems of inequality” (8, their emphasis); why focus on creating hierarchical leadership within smaller systems rather than on creating mass support? This seems to draw implicitly from the old school idea that activists are motivated by self-interest and personal experience of injustice; but the concept of justice for all implies that an injustice is also an affront to all—wouldn’t it make more sense to try to tap into this?
8. This article clearly adopts a market analysis approach, akin in many ways to resource mobilization; but if we consider this in the light of social theory, might Mauss’s articulation of gift exchange not be a more salient descriptor? It seems as if it might capture individual motivation here more accurately.
9. Why do we use the words “movement” and “mobilization” in these contexts? What is being moved? What’s the cultural resonance of this metaphor?
10. The discussion of alliance building reminds me of Latour’s Actor-Network Theory; should we consider material agency here as well?
11. Does Occupy—or the various branches of Occupy—have similar funding discussions with philanthropic institutions? How many social movements are funded by philanthropic institutions?
12. If we apply metrics to everything, will we end up with a real picture of events or a mediated picture of measured events?
13. Why does everyone always use “hearts and minds”? Yes, it has historical resonance, but is this the resonance you want? Hasn’t it, like most clichés, become just a shorthand that obviates the need for actual thought? Why not livers and kidneys?
14. People talk about social media democratizing the public sphere; what about using technology to democratize more of politics? Why doesn’t anyone talk about that? Or do they?
15. I’m all for social media, but it only reaches a certain segment of the population and has a paradoxical evanescence; why doesn’t anyone ever discuss the value of books? Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Peaceable Kingdom, and Silent Spring, among others, all had significant social movement impact.
16. So, the authors use “movement building” as a more holistic, network-focused term, with organizational development as a single component?
17. Why did these authors write this as they did? That is, employing the stylistics of a corporate text? Who is their intended audience and what do they want to accomplish with this?

Biographical impact vs establishment impact

I’m wondering what the relationship is between the biographical impact of a movement and those aspects of it which would increase its impact on the establishment.  Marco Giugni notes that “the narrower and more specific the movement goals, the more likely they are to get a response from the establishment.”  I would also posit that higher levels of organization within the movement aide in this potential impact.  I posit that the more closely a movement resembles or interfaces well with the establishment, the more likely it is that the establishment will respond in a helpful way.  However, I wonder if movements of the type that are likely to impact the establishment are also likely to have as powerful a biographical impact on the non-elite participants as less organized, focused movements like OWS.  I would argue no, that those types of establishment-oriented movements are in fact more likely to alienate or leave cold the non-activist population who may otherwise be inspired by a decentralized movement like OWS, Anonymous, or slacktivist-style actions.

I would like to argue that movements like OWS, as well as other movement-oriented social entities like Anonymous, as they become more horizontal, more identity-oriented, more free-associative in their ideologies, willingly sacrifice the chance to take an impactful place at the level of the establishment in favor of remaining impactful at the local, biographical level.  I would also argue that biographical impact and cultural impact are more closely related to each other than to impact on the establishment.

There’s been some great writing on the value of slacktivism and identity oriented activism and how it offers a useful alternative to the professionalized activist system recently from Matt Stempeck and Zeynep Tufecki.

Anti-CNN as Tactical Media?

When I tried to search “tactical media in China” in academic databases, I found the term of tactical media is rarely used in Chinese context, but there are several other articles describing online disobedience that draws from cultural materials, such as slang and symbols, to challenge existing powers. As said in Molly’s article, many words are given new meaning by netizens as a tactic to escape the censorship. Except for these practices and innovations of cultural symbols which could be understood as tactical media, I am also thinking about other more formal interventions. In Boler’s introduction, she mentioned the rise of Al Jazeera is the intervention that participates in the first tier of media structure. In this respect I guess in China there is no such tactical media that makes the intervention at this level. However, I do observe some groups which are temporarily self-formulated as a respond to the reporting of dominant media. The question I have for these groups is about how they can transform into more stable forms instead of just as temporary existence.

I am going to introduce a case to illustrate this form of tactical media in China, and through examining their rise and decline, I particularly ask why they can survive after the news cycle dies down. Anti-CNN was an forum founded by a group of college students who discovered that the media reports from CNN and other western media did not objectively portray 2008 Tibetan Protest. For example, some media used older footage of Nepal police beating monks to show the suppression from Chinese authority. It aroused huge anger among Chinese netizens against the fact that the discourse of the event was dominated by these western media. Often this case was thought as a manifestation of the growing neo-nationalism in China by several scholars (eg. Yang and MacKinnon). Western media first accused them of being supported by the Chinese government, but in fact they were completely self-initiated by several college students. However, they rightly pointed out this single event was not independent to other social factors. In the year of 2008, the Beijing Olympic was no longer just a sports event, but in fact for many Chinese people it was a presentation of the national identity. The disturbance of the torch relay in Paris led to another anger within domestic public sphere. These events kept the patriotic emotions of the public at a high level, and when the reports from CNN were found biased, these messages from Anti-CNN were quickly and widely circulated. For the media ecology within China, Anti-CNN might not be a typical tactical media, because in fact they reinforced the existing dominant ideology. If our perspective changes to the international ecology this type of media might be counted as one, because the dominant discourse still belongs to the mainstream western media.

Media has its own agenda, and the audience has limited media attention. After the news cycle dies down, Anti-CNN has to reposition itself. In 2009, they changed their site name into April Media and its task was not just to find the biased reports in western media, but they produced and curated news from the perspective of neo-leftist. This strategy is effective because in fact the emotion of neo-nationalism and neo-leftism in society is inevitable as long as the frictions between communist and western ideologies still exist. Now this site is one of the main places where news and views from the left are collected. The tactical media is described as temporary interventions and I wonder if the emphasis of temporary intervention has an assumption that this strategy is more impactful than the stable form after its initial “tactical” period. I think at least long term intervention such as the April Media after its initial stage of Anti-CNN suggests the oppositional discourse can be the hidden force that let the tactical media exist more consistently in the mainstream media environment.

The Outcomes of the Movements: The Diffusion Network

In  Marco Giugni’s piece, he pointed out that the outcome of a movement should not only be understood as direct political outcome, but rather the long term cultural outcome should also be emphasized. I think this perspective is quite powerful as a response to comment on the success or failure of the movements. Beyond the judgement of the movement, I am particularly interested in some of the mechanisms of how the cultural outcome works as laid out by Giugni, and one of them is the “spillover” effect:

“Another cultural impact of the movement can be seen in the “spillover” effect on other movements and citizens across the globe. Surely, the upheavals in the Middle East have encouraged citizens in other part of the world, including the U.S., to take to the streets to show their discontent. But such connections among movements can also be seen in the longer run. In this sense, in fact, the Occupy Movement itself could well be seen as a long-term product of the global justice movement, which laid the seeds for what would occur more than a decade later when the circumstances became favorable for the emergence of this new wave of contention. More to the point, we can expect the Occupy Movement to leave a legacy that will bear its fruits in the future, opening up the democratic space for new waves of contention and citizens’ political participation.”

As this paragraph above is only from his blog post, in which he did not provide more analysis about why the Occupy Movement could be seen as the product of the global justice movement. Even though they both target at the inequalities of distribution, I think some aspects, such as their organizational linkage, their specific appeals, and their tactical diffusion, should also be examined before claims that link a later movement to a former movement are made. I remember in a lecture about Wukan Incident a question was asked to an investigative journalist about whether the activists in Wukan learnt their tactics of protest from their experiences as migrant workers in the cities and the strikes happen more in cities. Her answer was that she did not think there was enough evidence of linking these protests together. I think her opinion insists that “spillover” effect is convincing only when established mechanisms are found, for example, the same group of people striking or protesting in different episodes.

When I read this article, I cannot help thinking about how to make the “political vs cultural” outcome framework fit into my own “adversarial vs supportive” media strategy perspective. In the non-adversarial case, Wukan Incident, the activists have their specific practical appeals including replacing the corrupt village leaders, and transparent village leaders election. These practical claims are easier for them and the government to reach agreement, and thus achieve the political outcome in this respect. In fact, the success of Wukan inspired other villages having similar problems of land disputes to organize their own protests. I think Wukan strategy is non-adversarial also because their way of dealing with the diffusion of the actions. They consciously alienate the visitors from other villages because one of the sensitive boundary for the party to judge the movement to see if they formulate a network (串联). The other case in my work is Ai Weiwei’s human rights movement, which I frame as adversarial. Although the information of his movement is banned in domestic media, discursively his movement is quite successful. He cleverly draws from cultural symbols, artistic forms and languages to generate a discourse of democracy and himself is thought as an icon of human rights fighters. I wonder to what extent his actions and his admirers can be thought as “spillover” effect of previous democratic movement such as 1989 Tiananmen Movement. In fact activists striving for Tibetan freedom, exiles of 1989 movement students, Falun Gong practitioners, alienated by Chinese authority, automatically connect to each other. Therefore, in this respect I think in authoritarian countries, the non-adversarial strategy might include the control to limit the “spillover” effect, and in contrast with the adversarial movement, the compromise is the lessened possibility of long term democratic discourse.

Bonus Army and OWS: Comparing Identity and Tactic Framing

First Draft of our Project

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LT6vJadoqux4O_PRILZs0hgumDj6BG94lqKjN-akjgM/edit

 

Media Reflection

After reading Boler and some of the past blog posts, I thought that a short reflection might at least help me understand some distinctions between my own experience and those already covered. Meg Boler’s experience with Tim Russert and subsequent concerns about media dominance, bring to mind a distinction between speaker or listener. In most cases, there are always more listeners than speakers. Indeed, Boler’s experience with Russert is, possibly, where two “speakers” or points of view collide. Essentially, the broader perspective is “empowered” individual free speech. I am mindful that Boler isn’t exactly a nameless face in the internet “crowd”. Moreover, the delivery and tone might also have an effect. However, we all have some experience of what constitutes “free” speech; and, that is exactly what Boler was doing no matter her delivery or informed “tone”. Russert, on the other hand, was more of a spokesperson by virtue of position and subject. Clearly, Russert didn’t feel obliged to listen. I’ve often been impressed with the fact that free speech does not require active listening and can as actively be disregarded. However, it’s a bit harder to ignore the speaker when it is the voice of the multitude. While Boler wasn’t the multitude, she was expressing a common perspective.

I had a similar experience last week when I engaged with Nawaf Obaid a spokesperson for the Saudi Information Ministry and Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies.

I suggested that the Saudi government did not “encourage” or welcome free exchange in the internet blogesphere. His reaction was swift and angry; but, it was only momentary. Four other Saudi citizens agreed and challenged his assessment. It was interesting to observe the difference between my tone and theirs.

While I didn’t consider my response particularly confrontational, there was a difference both in tone and position. They were believable. I could be disregarded as “ill informed”. The four Saudi citizens were credible and trying very hard to be polite, yet authoritative.

Subsequent, non-Saudi speakers were challenged as being ill informed or out of touch. That’s easy when non-Saudi’s are excluded from full participation. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s preference to actively embrace his political opponents.

Thus, the environments of discussion can and frequently do become confrontational. What happens next is important. In the hacker domain, it seems that we frequently see an attempt to “punish” by an attack on the infrastructure — i.e., denial of service attacks, server hacks, “leaks”, etc. This ability to punish is enabled by technical tools not normally used by individual speakers. Then, these attempts seem to go beyond “free speech” where the ability to exact “punishment” is frequently not deemed to be “protected” speech. The same is true of verbal heckling and audio protest.

Thus, the position of the pulpit becomes important; and, the ability to make pronouncements is, itself, powerful and threatening. Clearly, Boler makes this exact point in her explanation of media dominance. How to overcome such dominance is at issue and can become disruptive to the process of free exchange.

The mass rallies during the periods of “Arab Spring” in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria are examples of massive responses. Here free speech seems to be an expression of group audio “voting”, becoming a revolution — viz. Gustave LeBon and Sampedro. In all cases, these confrontations are often difficult for the participants on both sides. After working in the public sector for many years, I’ve been in many confrontations as the government’s spokesperson. None are pleasant. All exchanges are important and necessary.

At least in the USA, we have developed an idea for what comes after “free speech”. We have already discussed the obligations of the government to listen and act accordingly: Administrative Procedures Act and Title VI (Civil Rights Act); and, the equal protection provision of the Constitution. I’m glad to be a part of that environment — as a US Citizen. The Saudi citizens at the Harvard meeting felt that their only choice was to leave their own country to enable their voice! There was one grim outcome from the meeting, however.

The Saudi spokesperson, Nawaf Obaid, speaking to Iranian members of the audience indicated that Saudi Arabia would acquire nuclear capacity if Iran continued its nuclear program. Indeed, Saudi’s acquisition would be for the purposes of nuclear weapons as would its other middle eastern allies. That threat seemed to trump all others. It further demonstrated how frightening such confrontations cam become. It makes living in Massachusetts seem like a real blessing!

Critical Art Ensemble: Electronic Civil Disobedience

Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas by the Critical Art Ensemble, 1996

Ch.1 Electronic Civil Disobedience

In this opening essay, the CAE set out their rational for electronic civil disobedience and a laying out of the organizational strategy behind electronic civil disobedience.

The CAE initially notes that since the conception and popularization of civil disobedience, power structures have shifted such that the local occupation of a single building no longer presents a disruption to macro-power structures.  Rather, with the advent of computing and networked communications, corporate and state entities can move freely from the location of a disturbance, and continue operations without interruption.  So, the CAE argues, as structures of power more into the networked space, so too should methods and bodies of resistance.

The CAE draws a clean equivalence between traditional civil disobedience and the new electronic civil disobedience, holding both the strategies and the theoretical underpinnings to be the same, just carried from the real world into cyberspace.  As they were previously talking about the occupations of structures of oppression in the real world (town halls, administrative buildings, corporate headquarters, etc), they now just as easily talk about the occupation of websites.  (They don’t explicitly refer to distributed denial of service attacks, but that is the tactic to which they are referring.)  They take pains to emphasize that such tactics can be easily abused and should only be used against oppressive institutions, avoiding as much as possible collateral damage to civilians.  They also mention data hostages and system crashes as potential tactics.

Though there were hackers operating in the political arena at the time this book was written, the CAE declines to acknowledge them as serious political actors, instead calling them “children” who lack a sophisticated political philosophy.  (I find the ways the CAE talks about the political activities of hackers active at the time to be incredibly condescending and in many ways ill-informed.)  They argue for a joining of forces between hackers and activists like themselves, who have a sufficiently developed “critical sensibility” to guide the political actions.  They further argue that electronic civil disobedience cannot be an activity of the masses, but rather should be carried out by small, semi autonomous, semi permanent cells who strike out at industry and government anonymously.  These cells would be under the loose direction of a larger, public organization charged with public relations, education, and recruitment.

Finally, the CAE point out that computer crimes are prosecuted (in 1996 and now) without regard to intent, which places acts of electronic civil disobedience in the realm of felonies, rather than the realm of other acts of civil disobedience.

Ch. 2 Resisting the Bunker

The CAE defines a bunker as a “foundation of homogeneity,” a structure which “allows only a singular actions within any given situation.”  Examples of these are malls, bureaucracies , factories, and the mass media environment.  In this essay, the CAE lays out two potential artistic reactions to “the bunker,” intending to act as confrontational or destabilizing measures.  These reactions are labeled “sedentary” and “nomadic.”  The sedentary model confronts bunkerizing structures on a one-to-one basis, seeking to overwhelm the bunker with its own symbolic force.  The nomadic model does not confront the bunker directly, but rather seeks to undermine it with “ephemeral, process oriented methods.”  The CAE argues that the nomadic model is more effective at undermining these bunkers.

In order to make their argument, the CAE first attacks the concept of public and community art, claiming that in the first place there is no modern manifestation of either public spaces or community.  They further argue that art which depends on bureaucratic legitimation can never achieve its confrontational ends.

The CAE instead advocates for the nomadic model, which leaves far more interpretation in the hands of the audience and further depends on the oppressive reaction of the bunker being challenged to make much of its point.  To illustrate this, they give an example of a work performed by the CAE, entitled Are We There Yet?

Ch. 3 Slacker Luddites

The slacker Luddites in this essay are not those who go after the office printer with a baseball bat, but rather those who, in a corporate office environment, engage in zero work and other counter-productivity measures.  While the original Luddites smashed mechanical looms out of a fear of being replaced by them, the Slacker Luddite enjoys a much more nuanced relationship with technology and the cyborg-self.  The Slacker Luddite’s conflict lies with “work,” not necessarily with the machines on which that work is done.  The CAE lays out several different Slacker Luddite activities, from bull sessions around the Xerox machine to the height of Slacker Luddite-ness: using company resources to complete freelance assignments, thus exploiting the system which is seeking to exploit you.

Ch. 4 The Technology of the Useless

The CAE lay out two potential ultimate ends for the technologically-mediated society: one the utopian ideal where technology has absolved humanity from the obligation to work, leaving us free to explore better ends; and the other dystopic future where technology either drives us into a super-powered war which destroys all of man kind or wherein AIs rise and annihilate humanity.  The CAR rejects both these potential futures for a third: the useless technology future.  In this future, indeed, as the CAE describes it, in this present, the vast majority of technology is characterized by its sheer uselessness, either because people do not know how to use the technology (as in VCR example) or because the technology was specifically designed to never be used (as in the nuclear warhead example). There are many more examples littered throughout the essay, including several pages of satirical ads for luxury goods and MRI machines.  The CAE concludes by positing that this fascination with uselessness is a manifestation of society’s decline, the continued sacrifice to the materialistic foundation of society.

Ch. 5 Human Sacrifice in the Rational Economy

In this essay, CAE surveys the role of human sacrifice in modern American society and specifically its relation to the economy of excess CAE observes as dominating society.  CAE delineates two types of human sacrifice: those occurring out of a principle of excess, and those occurring out of an adherence to principles of human autonomy.  In those human sacrifices occurring out of excess, CAE classifies victims of war and genocide, those which occur as a result of interaction with commercial commodities (specifically cars and traffic deaths), commercial farming and the use of pesticides (more particularly the deaths of laborers who work in the production of consumer goods), the social concept of the sociopathic killer, injuries and maimings in spectator sports, and gun related violence.  CAE specifically points out that death and sacrifice must be hidden, stylized or fetishized to be acceptable in modern American society.  CAE ultimately argues for the “visibility of the abject” or a confrontation with the realities of death in American society as a method of pushing back against the human sacrifices to the economy of excess.

Ch. 6 Addictionmania

This essay begins as a criticism of an overgrown medical bureaucracy ends as a condemnation of US drug policy and the drug war.  The CAE argues that society’s reaction to the concept of addiction is a form of hysteria induced by the medical establishment, one built on moral panics and fear of mortality, as well as a pseudo-religious urge towards purity.  Furthermore, CAE argues that the perception of addiction has a significant economic portion as well, as lower socio-economic groups are often condemned in much stronger terms (both culturally and legally) for addiction than other socio economic groups.  The CAE also argues that the vaunted “long, healthy life” as valued in American society has no intrinsic value, and certainly has no apparent value in modern society, and that hedonistic pleasure might just as well take precedence over any health concerns about recreational drug use.

Epilogue: Nonrational Strategies

The CAE concludes this essay collection by arguing for nonrational resistance strategies as a method of reclaiming our lost human autonomy.  To illustrate these strategies, they call upon the examples St Catherine of Siena, a Catholic saint who split from the Church and became, more or less, an autonomous mystic, and Daniel Ludwig, an eccentric millionaire who destroyed a significant chunk of the Brazilian rainforest in an effort to build a paper plant and tree farm.