role of unions in Tunisia and Egypt – the role of real social networks

From the UK’s newspaper, The Guardian.

Trade Unions: The Revolutionary Social Network at Play in Egypt and Tunisia

“The media have focused on Facebook and Twitter, but the pro-democracy movements have flourished thanks to unions”

by Eric Lee and Benjamin Weinthal – Thursday, 10 February 2011

Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the demise of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and the weakening of Hosni Mubarak’s grip on state power in Egypt, has been the trade unions in both countries.

While the media has reported on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook as revolutionary methods of mobilisation, it was the old-fashioned working class that enabled the pro-democracy movements to flourish.

As working men and women in Egypt became increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and a deteriorating quality of life, the only legal trade unions – the ones affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) – proved worthless. The result of all of this was an unprecedented wave of strikes across the public and private sectors that began in 2004 and has continued to the present day. During the first four years of the current strike wave, more than 1,900 strikes took place and an estimated 1.7 million workers were involved.

As one worker in a fertiliser company put it, the effect of going on strike was to convince the employer “that they had a company with human beings working in it. In the past, they dealt with us as if we were not human.”

The strikes began in the clothing and textile sector, and moved on to building workers, transport workers, food processing workers, even the workers on the Cairo metro. The biggest and most important took place back in 2006 at Misr Spinning and Weaving, a company that employs some 25,000 workers.

The state-controlled ETUF opposed these strikes and supported the government’s privatisation plans. A turning point was reached when municipal tax collectors not only went on strike, but staged a three-day, 10,000-strong sit-in in the streets of Cairo, opposite the prime minister’s office.

This could not be ignored, and the government was forced to allow the formation last year of the first independent trade union in more than half a century.

Pro-labour NGOs played a critical role in providing support and guidance to these strikes and protests. As a result, they were targeted by the regime, their offices closed and leaders arrested. The best known of these groups is the Centre for Trade Union and Worker Services(CTUWS), which has been around since 1990.

Groups such as the CTUWS in turn enlisted the support of trade unions in other countries, and that support was invaluable – particularly in persuading the government to ease up on repression.

Those links with the international trade union movement have proven critical in recent days as well. When the Mubarak regime tried to cut off Egypt from the internet, CTUWS activists were able to phone in their daily communiques to the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Centre in Washington. The messages were transcribed, translated from the Arabic, and passed on to the wider trade union world using websites such as LabourStart.

In sharp contrast to the last seven years of Egyptian labour unrest, the Tunisian trade unions played a kingmaker role during the end phase of the uprising.

After decades of lethargy, docility and state domination of the General Tunisian Workers’ Union (UGTT), Tunisia’s largest employee organisation –with roughly half a million members – helped not only eradicate Ben Ali’s regime, but determined the shape of the post-Ben Ali government.

Working-class Tunisians were animated by the same goals as their Egyptian counterparts; namely, the desire to secure dignity and respect, bring about real political democracy, and improve their standard of living.

Mushrooming disapproval of Ben Ali’s regime among trade union members, coupled with a vibrant youth movement demanding dignity and greater employment opportunities, seems to explain the shift of top-level UGTT officials who had hitherto been loyal Ben Ali.

Cultivating democracy in Tunisia, and Egypt requires two pre-conditions. First, workers’ organisations must remain independent of state control. Second, to blunt the Iranian model, Islamists must be barred from hijacking free trade unions.

This helps to explain the worries of Habib Jerjir, a labour leader from the Regional Workers’ Union of Tunis: “That’s the danger,” he said. “I’m against political Islam. We must block their path.”

The UGTT, founded more than 60 years ago, has a history of strike action. Take the examples of the 1977 strike against a state-owned textile plant in Ksar Hellal, and a work stoppage involving phosphate miners in the same year, which secured a victory. The UGTT also called for an unprecedented general strike in 1978.

In a precursor to the December-January protests against Ben Ali’s corrupt system, phosphate mine workers in Gafsa waged a six-month battle against a manipulated recruitment process which sparked resistance among young unemployed workers. Rising discontent with the nepotism and cronyism of the state-controlled UGTT prompted workers to occupy the regional office.

This means that participatory economic democracy played a decisive role in Tunisian society before the Jasmine revolution. Ben Ali swiftly suffocated free and democratic trade union activity during his 23-year domination over organised labour (1987-2011). But he could not extinguish democratic aspirations among workers.

There are no exact parallels, but much of this reminds us of what happened in Poland in 1979-80. There, as in Egypt and Tunisia, we saw a mixture of a repressive, single-party state with trade unions that functioned as an arm of the ruling party. But there was also a network of NGOs that quietly worked behind the scenes, in workplaces and communities.

The result was the 1980 strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the formation of Solidarnosc, and the end not only of the Communist regime in Poland but of the entire Soviet empire.

Today’s pro-democracy revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia are the culmination of that process, and where it will lead we cannot predict – though Poland does provide an appealing model.

The pressing point is that experts misjudged the tumult in Egypt and Tunisia largely because they ignored and overlooked the democratic aspirations of working-class Tunisians and Egyptians. To understand why so many authoritarian Arab regimes remain fragile, one need to only to look through the window on to the court of labour relations.

GESO emerging trends in higher education panel remarks

This past Monday, February 21, I sat on a panel for a discussion entitled “Emerging Trends in Higher Education: The Changing Face of Academia.” Below are my remarks.

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****

First, I’d like to thank Franco, Valerie, Maria, and Chris for helping us contextualize the GESO struggle. It is imperative that we link what goes on at Ohio State with what is occurring internationally and with the trends and patterns nationally. Ignoring our links to Tunisia or Wisconsin, Italy or California opens up a space to further sediment our exploitation.

I use this word, exploitation, consciously and hopefully it is unsettling. As the other panelists have shown us, the translation of graduate employee positions to secure, tenured positions with the academic freedom, flexible schedule, and intellectual fulfillment that the vast majority of us want is not happening. What these panelists have helped us realize, I hope, is that without action on our part, here, now, then our positions as graduate employees is doomed to a permanence that shifts our experiences from the realm of a willingly experienced apprenticeship to the first stage of an exploitative relationship that will continue for our entire careers.

But we have a unique opportunity to change this outlook. The emergence of international and national struggles against the global regime of an educational paradigm driven by debt, decreasing opportunities to translate the new discourse of instrumental degrees into employment, and the elimination of rights for public workers (including graduate employees) is serendipitous, for us, as it allows us to connect our struggle to a concrete movement. It is becoming abundantly clear that the changes GESO has been promoting for about a decade now are not unreasonable.

What is it that GESO has been working to correct? Here are a few examples:

- OSU currently has no legally binding contract that guarantees that when an offer of employment is made to a graduate student to teach that the wages and benefits that go with that appointment must be honored. It is a common experience for graduate students at this university to be extended an offer of employment only to have it rescinded. Students who have chosen OSU for its academic programs, stellar faculty, and campus resources frequently find themselves regretting their decision to attend, given that they turned down offers from other universities that would have been more stable.

- OSU currently sets its minimum stipend level at $1000 per month. A non-profit organization in Columbus estimates that the required minimum monthly salary in order to avoid any form of public assistance is $1400, and this is likely to rise. Unionized campuses often have a minimum stipend that reflects the cost of living in the area in which the university is situated, and bargain for raises indexed to cost of living increases. For example, the University of Michigan’s minimum stipend is over $2000 per month. OSU’s minimum stipend level depresses wages and leads to countless sacrifices made by graduate employees every day. Even worse, Ohio State’s minimum stipend level seems to assume a number of stereotypes about graduate students: that they are single, wealthy, come to grad school with no previous debt, and are willing and able to go into debt to close the gap between stipend and living expenses.

- Departments are increasingly asking graduate employees to shoulder more and more of the financial burden in order to teach. The Music department has, in the past and perhaps currently, asked its graduate employees to pay for all photocopies related to teaching. Other departments will not purchase dry erase markers or chalk. The most alarming trend, however, is how many departments are now asking graduate students to teach multiple courses as a rule, rather than the exception, without adequate compensation. Philosophy and Political Science are two departments where students are increasingly asked to take on teaching two sections of a single course, or two different courses entirely, and paid at the 75% appointment level because the university prohibits 100% appointments. 50% plus 50% does not equal 75%; yet in many departments this seems to be rapidly becoming the norm. Gone unchallenged, this will soon become the expectation all around campus. The sad thing is, graduate students are so often desperate for the money and accept this arrangement without question; or when they are presented with the option, it is framed as a “learning opportunity” that will give them “an advantage on the academic market.”

- OSU has no independently mediated grievance procedure, leading to regular abuses of graduate employees and a culture of fear which prevents speaking up.

- Health care costs are unreasonable, especially for those on regular, expensive medications or those with spouses, partners, and/or dependents.

- and the list could go on.

We must be careful, though, and not focus too heavily on the wages and benefits issues. In fact, OSU has already used a common union busting tactic against GESO just when it seemed that we were gaining the momentum that would lead to unionization. In 2005, OSU caved on the health care subsidy and, in effect, gutted the momentum GESO had built. By focusing on the single issue of health care benefits, the university effectively stopped GESO in its tracks by giving a little, a 75% subsidy at the time; with our momentum killed, GESO has been struggling since then to continue to organize. This is hard to understand, though, given what we know about our working conditions, which are not good. We must find a way to fight back against the rhetoric of gratitude and sacrifice that is so normal: it is frighteningly common to hear “I’m just so grateful to have a position at all; I really need the teaching experience to be competitive on the job market, so I’ll make sacrifices now in order to make my entry into full-time, tenured employment easier.” But again, we know this is no longer the case.

The conditions at OSU are ripe for a collective response. And the GESO members think that response can be in the form of a union. However, with John Kasich in office, emboldened by like-minded governors in New Jersey – Chris Christie – and Wisconsin – Scott Walker, union rights to collective bargaining are under attack. But if we change the way we think about unionization from the mere economism of wages and benefits toward reimagining the collective politics of the precariat – students, flexible workers, academics, and others, then we have the opportunity to shift the balance of power.

Any unionization effort must also focus on the possibility for unionization to intervene in the governance processes at the university in a democratic way. I don’t mean, however, shared governance. Of course we should be involved in decision making processes – and I would especially like to see this happen through direct democracy rather than representation. What I mean, instead, is the possibility of an campus or academic union that takes the university as a site around which we build a ‘world’ or a form of life – in this sense, a union is actually what helps produce a particular sensibility at Ohio State.

This world of which I speak is one in which it is normal to expect agitation around wages and benefits issues, the university’s role in community development, and the way major donations are spent. It is a form of life that naturalizes a solidarity across employment category: janitor, Sodexo worker, graduate employee, and undergraduate work studies would just be the beginning.

This conversation is intended, as Amy noted in her introductory remarks, to begin to conceptualize, yet again, what unionization would mean for the university. What GESO has worked for, historically, has been a union for graduate employees. Over the past year and half to two years, though, we have been making connections to broader movements in Columbus – such as the Jobs With Justice effort to pressure OSU to sign a community benefits agreement that would include local hiring provisions and agreements to use union labor in new building projects. Recognizing that we must work not just in cooperation but in absolute synchronization with the efforts of USAS, SEIU, and Sodexo workers to unionize, with janitors, adjunct and full-time faculty, trade unions, and community organizations. What we have come to recognize is that the struggle of graduate employees is actually a small component integral to the role of a new paradigm of flexible, precarious, immaterial laborers.

 

academic labor and the new paradigm of class politics: toward an immaterial unionism – outline

A while back I posted a first rough draft of an essay I’m working on called “Academic Labor and the New Paradigm of Class Politics.” I’ve now expanded the title to include the subtitle “Toward an Immaterial Unionism,” and I’ve revised it to follow an Introduction – Theses – Proposal format a bit more conducive to the zine/polemic sensibility that I’m going for. I’m hoping to have a draft sufficiently completed to distribute on Monday, February 21, 2011 at the GESO panel discussion, “Emerging Trends in Higher Education: The Changing Face of Academia.”

*****

Introduction

A Brief History and Rationale for Unions

Thesis 1: The crisis of the university is experienced momentarily, but is in fact the condition of the university’s historical existence.

Thesis 2: The university functions in the economy today as the factory yesterday.

Thesis 3: Given the function of the edu-factory in siting and (re)producing immateriality, unions as a response to academic working conditions are insufficient.

Thesis 4: An academic union, as a manifestation of the common university, is a decisive intervention in the edu-factory.

Thesis 5: The university cannot be saved; it must be reconstituted.

Proposals

more Egypt links

On leaderless revolutions and the fall of Mubarak – Revolution by the Book

Egypt’s new day – Continental Drift

The revolution in Egypt: The end of the new pharaohs – The Translation Collective

Egypt erupts as Mubarak steps down – NYT

Uncharted ground after end of Egypt’s regime – NYT

A brittle leader, appearing strong – NYT

Photos from Egypt – NYT

Egypt’s military leaders face power sharing test – NYT

Birthplace of uprising welcomes its success – NYT

Obama presses Egypt’s military on democracy – NYT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

contextualizing u.s. higher education activism

My contribution to the February 2011 GESO newsletter. Distribution of the whole newsletter is scheduled for next week.

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****

The United States has entered a period of general educational crisis; but this crisis has nothing to do with what mainstream policy makers and commentators would have you believe. Rather than declining in quality and innovation, the US remains a destination country for higher education (meaning most of the world’s best universities are here and attracting students from abroad) and the country remains the site of innovation in science, engineering, and business. This doesn’t appear to be in serious jeopardy in the near future. The changes to higher education being forced through in many states right now, based on arguments about maintaining competitiveness and an innovative edge, are chimeras. Chimeras conjured to solidify the university as a site of immediate value production.

American higher education activism has generally been geared toward creating and preserving a critical distance between the demands of immediate value production and the historic ideal of the university as a site of humanistic education, clearly a case of deferred value production. American students have engaged in activism since the founding of higher education in the country – students at Harvard rioted over the quality of butter in the dining halls in 1766. In the last century or so, American students have been mostly mobilized around creating an inclusive, identity-driven curriculum and the accessibility of the university to various historically marginalized constituencies. These battles reflect the humanistic ideals of the university, and demonstrate that historically what students want from their education is not immediate value. It is external pressure from corporations and ignorant politicians driving the current trend toward insisting that the university serve as a center for vocational training.

The current battle over the role, meaning, and value of higher education in the United States (and the world) is a battle over the very meaning of the public sphere within the new paradigm of class politics: immaterial labor. As capital continues to adapt itself to the realm of finance, services, and the production of creativity, traditional labor politics are put under erasure. There are still factories, meat packing plants, construction sites, and other traditional bastions of labor, but they are increasingly marginalized in favor of an economy based around the production of affects, ideas, and services that are nor produced in linear, regimented, atomized modes of production. These changes are driving more diverse students to the university. It is not surprising that the current crisis in higher education coincides with this historically unmatched increase in college enrollment by ethnic minorities and traditionally poor white populations.

The new modes of production coupled with the influx of the historic laboring classes into the realm of immaterial labor – a realm traditionally dominated by the bourgeoisie – are shifting the site of class politics from the factory to the university. The university has become the factory, at least in terms of its function in the economy; but this change presents new challenges. Immaterial production is difficult to measure quantitatively, making the ability to engage in collective bargaining increasingly difficult. This leads to downright silly measures of “productivity” by valuing the quantity of faculty publications over quality: publish or perish is a new form of class war, designed to keep faculty and graduate students concerned more about output than defending their quality of life.

Now more than ever we must recognize that the working conditions of faculty – including the contingent labor of graduate assistants of all types and adjunct faculty – are directly tied to the meaning and value of public higher education. Without tenure, academic freedom, and benefits and compensation that guarantee a form of life conducive to the life of the mind the public university as an idea and an aspiration will cease to exist.

Ohio State already receives among the highest amounts of private and corporate sponsorship of research among US universities. President Gee is, and has been, committed to the destruction of academic disciplines and the relegation of research funding through an internal system of competitive grants. He has also been vocal about the need to change the tenure system. It is obvious why Gee is seen, worldwide, as one of the foremost proponents of the corporate university, and wishes to see the traditional role of higher education altered in favor of a notion of “productivity” and “usefulness” to society that is the very death of public education.

Join GESO in defending the very idea of public higher education by demanding 1) the compensation and benefits that allow us to live our lives while pursuing our educations, 2) a meaningful role in the governance process of the university, and 3) the redirection of university resources away from vanity building projects and towards university support for research in ALL disciplines.

academic labor and the new paradigm of class politics

Feedback please! I’m working on this for 1) the GESO website and 2) for some circulation in discussions on academic labor.

*****

Why would graduate students need a union? is one of the most common questions GESO activists come across while organizing the campus. Answering this question, GESO activists usually focus on our ongoing struggle for transactional benefits such as an increased minimum stipend, better health benefits for students and their families, a formal grievance procedure, and other issues. Rarely, though, do we get an opportunity to discuss larger themes and trends in higher education and political economy. In an effort to make the GESO website as useful as possible, we’d like to take the opportunity to address one of the primary reasons that a graduate employee union (and unions for adjunct and full-time faculty as well) is absolutely necessary: the paradigmatic shift in the United States from an economy of material production to one of immaterial production.

Stated simply, unionism is no longer confined to the realm of the trades (carpenters, electricians, pipe-fitters, etc.) or manual labor (longshoremen, migrant farmworkers, etc.).

The early days of unionism saw the creation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO, the IWW; later, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) were formed to bring unions to new areas of the labor force. Even teachers were unionized in many places by the early 1900s (National Education Association, 1918; American Federation of Teachers, ). The growth of unions in the 20th Century  can be largely attributed to the maturation of a capitalism based on the mass production of material goods. This form of mass production brought with it a rash of problems the likes of which had never really been seen before: children missing limbs from industrial loom accidents, the black lung deaths of coal miners in Appalachia, and so on. Recognizing that government intervention was unlikely, and unable to combat the supposedly free labor contract on an individual basis, workers in the early 20th Century banded together to demand rights including fair wages, retirement benefits, injury and accident compensation, child labor prohibitions, and many other things we take for granted today in any workplace. Individually, a worker could not demand sick leave from the employer who literally exercised a power over the worker that dictated whether he could eat that night, let alone feed a family. Collectively, though, thousands of workers could force an employer to meet these basic demands. The peak of the material labor pact came in the wake of the New Deal and World War II and lasted until about the 1970s.

Decades of reasonable profits and a stable middle class weren’t enough, though, and with the OPEC oil crisis, capital began to push back. Beginning in Chile in the 1970s, then in Britain and the U.S. in the 1980s, neoliberal capital began to take root: outsource material production to countries where labor was not demanding a living wage, insource the production of new knowledge and innovation that would drive an economy without labor (a capitalist’s wet dream!). While we cannot know if we are at the pinnacle of this wave of capitalism, we can certainly say that the U.S. national economy is largely destroyed in favor of a global economy, the regional iteration of which is focused on producing knowledge, affects, and financial instruments – essentially, our economy has shifted to producing immaterial goods.

The university is one of the primary engines in the new economy, and graduate students are essential to the functioning of the university. Graduate students (and other contingent academic labor) have replaced material laborers in function, if not necessarily in experience. [It would certainly be ridiculous to claim that the experience of a graduate student in the humanities is equivalent to the dangerous life of a coal miner in 1920 West Virginia.] What is clear is that the labor required to drive the new economy is not coming from the factories, it is coming from universities.

Most of you are probably thinking at this point, ok, but still, why do we need a union, grad school is only a few years long and then I’ll go on and be a professor (or perhaps for those of you in engineering or some such department, a job in the private sector). If this were 1975, we would say, no problem, tough it out. However, the academic landscape has shifted dramatically: in 1975 the ration of tenured to non-tenured faculty on campus was 75::25; today it is directly reversed, part-time and contingent faculty now make up 75% of the academic workforce, with tenured positions rapidly falling below 25%. The sad reality is, most of us will leave OSU with an advanced degree and then go on to a pastiche of part-time academic jobs with little security, no academic freedom, few benefits, and wages so low that we’ll look forward to a lifetime of debt repayments. A graduate employee union certainly does not guarantee a fix to all of these problems, but it forms a particularly important foundation for a new class politics that can help 1) to alleviate the financial burden on grad students to hopefully reduce debt loads and increase the array of post-graduation opportunities and 2) to build a university-wide coalition of labor activists to not only protect wages and benefits, but also to create a democratic workplace.

 

More healthcare absurdity

Ryan Sager wrote an Op/Ed piece in today’s New York Times called “Keep Off the Astroturf.” He’s arguing that “the ‘public option’ part of President Obama’s health care reform plan” looks “dead in the water” and that the opposition many Democrats are now voicing to the “town hells” and the corporate-sponsored healthcare opposition is misplaced. He writes,

““We call it ‘Astroturf,’ ” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said of the protesters at town-hall meetings. “It’s not really a grass-roots movement.””

His basic argument, though, is that this kind of activism is “basic politics” and that labeling it fake activism (astroturf) is unfair because “With voters split fairly evenly down the middle on health care reform, it seems presumptuous to label your side ‘real’ and the other synthetic.”

His entire argument is spurious, because it does matter if your activism is corporate-sponsored but sold to the general public as grassroots.

First, I question his assertion that voters are about evenly split 50/50 about healthcare reform. Aside from a vocal minority of conservative activists and the idiots in congress (progressives included), it seems that most Americans want some kind of reform, they just disagree as to what it should look like and how much it should cost. So, pointing out that one side is being artificially driven into a frenzy is an important aspect to this policy “debate.”

Second, he presents the fact that there are certainly people who have to engage in the activism, and even if they are being organized by corporations it does nothing to dilute the fact that there are actual people showing up at town halls and turning them into “town hells.” Granted. But pointing out the absolute vacuity of their arguments, by unburying the money trail that shows that the corporate sponsorship is pushing lies, distortions, and acting in the interests of profits over people is not being unfair. These people certainly have a right to voice their opinion, but the public, policy makers, and the media are not obligated to treat their opinions as valid, because they aren’t. Debating the estimated costs and sources of funding for reform is valid. Debating whether we should have reform at all is valid. Debating the role of government in providing a human right to health is valid. However, “debating” the “fact” that the government wants to kill grandma using death panels of government bureaucrats is not. It just has no basis in reality, so it completely undermines Sager’s argument that they should be engaged just like any other political organizing.

Politics, in the context of liberal democracies, necessitates certain assumptions about truthful dialogue.

Of course, as I said in an earlier post on conservative activism, this entire situation is revealing the absolute absurdity of liberal democratic politics. The illusion that the management of interests is actually somehow always already political simply because it happens in the realm of government is just silly. We’re deluded into thinking we’re having a policy debate when what we’re really revealing is that the state-form itself limits our ability to engage in politics from the outset.

This “debate” isn’t about politics, it’s about profit.

Politics, Activism of the Absurd

As someone who has marched in Washington DC with CodePink, organized volunteer programs and campus-based activism, participated in boycotts, rallied here there and everywhere, and so on, I find myself conflicted when thinking about the current conservative activism around healthcare.

First, the notion of conservative activism seems a contradiction in terms. The people shouting down representatives at town hall meetings are generally the same as those who oppose “judicial activism” (usually informed by just awful thinking about the law as a concept and practice), who denounced anti-war activism as un-American and un-patriotic, and who are largely dismissive of libertarian and/or anarchist activism in such settings as community cop-watch programs, prison reform, and general youth-rights-expanding work. Having a CodePink protester arrested and castigated in the press for disrupting congressional proceedings to fund the war on Iraq is just fine; trying to have union members peacefully quiet hecklers is fascism. The double-standard is so obvious it is farcical.

Second, working within the current system (whether right or wrong), these tactics seem counterproductive in this case. CodePink was forced to infiltrate hearings because there were no mainstream media outlets airing dissenting views, even when presented in “rational,” peaceful, and constructive ways. Even the so-called bastions of the “liberal media,” CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, abdicated their responsibilities in vetting the war. The healthcare “debate” is an entirely different story. Just like the “birthers” are getting plenty of airtime (even in the negative, Orly Taitz has gotten tons of opportunities to air her absurdities), the “liberal” and conservative media outlets (and they’re all conservative, really) are giving plenty of time and coverage to the “death panels.” Given copious media coverage – some of which on dedicated and popular right-wing networks or programming – it vacates any justificatory grounds these protesters may have had in engaging in these so-called “town hells.”

Finally, there is a part of me that just wants to say that this is “politics” as usual in America. I scare-quote politics here because what passes for politics in our case is truly absurd, and this absurdity is being rendered wholly visible in these “town hells.” If they are serving no other purpose, they are at least opening many people’s eyes to the fact that politics in this country died a long time ago, if they ever existed. What we have instead is the management of personal interests within the state, whereby the state’s remaining in power becomes the defining metric for valid discourse. Given such unnatural parameters for discourse, we cannot have valid politics; we are left with the process of policing. The logic of police is being illuminated by the current right activism by nature of the fact that it is so clearly incongruous for the reasons I elaborated above. The hypocrisy in justification and the tactics used, while not new, are coming together in a matrix of (un)intelligibility that just screams at us: This is all absurd!

So, while I find the outright distortions of fact (I’m being generous here…) extremely distasteful, I can’t help but wonder if in the long run the possibilities for undermining the state based on these events are worth the bullshit. The left has long been guided by a hermeneutics of suspicion that now seems to be creeping into the mainstream and now even intruding on the right (who had their own hermeneutics of suspicion, but one quite different than what is happening now). This isn’t just suspicion of big government, this is suspicion of the state as a form, the ability of the state to meet anyone’s needs at all.

Pedagogy of a Public Market – Part 3 (final)

This post will conclude the paper I wrote after the initial phase of my research at the Columbus North Market. My research is by no means done, in fact this paper really only serves to highlight a few areas where future research is necessary. I will continue my fieldwork this quarter and continue to report as I go.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************

Neoliberal
Pedagogy in Public Space: “Safe Gathering” vs. “Dangerous Assembly”

The elision of gathering place and conspicuous
consumption is indicative of the new neoliberal paradigm.[1]
The injection of economic thinking into every aspect of life is one facet of neoliberalism,
one supported and inscribed through the shift of our public spaces into
commercial spaces. The historical development of the market shows that there
never really was a time when the two spheres were separate; however, the
redefinition of public space, combined with contemporary policing practices,
physical limitations of an indoor market, and the presence of mostly
prepared-food vendors marks a shift in the market’s relationship with the
citizens of Columbus.

According to Mark Cotè, Richard J.F. Day, and
Greig De Peuter, “The neoliberal project includes what is known as the
globalization of capital, as well as the intensification of societies of
control.”[2]
Problematic in such definitions (and they are common), however, is the
anthropomorphization of neoliberalism. Referring to a neoliberal project grants
agency to an ideology that is better described through the articulation of
numerous practices in mundane places, such as Columbus’ North Market. Observing
the market over a period of weeks in the winter of 2009 highlighted a number of
practices that seem to articulate with established thinking about
neoliberalism. I categorize the practices as drawing a distinction between
“safe gathering” and “dangerous assembly.”

I am defining “dangerous assembly” as any
gathering that disrupts commerce or tarnishes the appearance of the hyperreal.
This assembly is often intentionally disruptive (such as the Reclaim the
Streets movement[3]), directed
at capitalist enterprise (such as Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping[4]),
and can occur in large-scale or small-scale forms often without clear
leadership which makes it hard to eliminate.

At least since Seattle hosted the World Trade
Organization’s third Ministerial meeting in 1999, which exploded into violence,[5]
cities around the world have been extremely careful in regulating conduct in
public spaces. Coupled with the September 11^th terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, large-scale assembly has become
difficult to organize and execute without inciting preemptive state violence.
The Democratic and Republican National Conventions in both 2004 and 2008 are
further examples of a tightening of control in the wake of Seattle 1999. My
point here, though, is not to illustrate how the North Market is no longer a
place of dissent (by some accounts, it has been a place of political activism),
but rather the trickle-down effect from neoliberal policing practices has meant
that only a certain kind of dissent is
allowable, and “dangerous assembly” is not it.

Instead, “safe gathering” is encouraged, which
I am referring to as the regulated and parsed gathering of small, private
groups of people in public space that does not impede commerce or shine a
critical light on the hyperreal. These practices are acceptable to the
commercial enterprise of the market while still allowing for some (limited)
choice-making activities. By allowing for small groups of people to gather
around tables to talk about whatever they like, an appearance of freedom is
generated that makes “dangerous assembly” practices seem outside the norm. It
becomes an affront to common sense to see people disrupting commerce in any
way. These practices ensure that it appears that there is a balance of commerce
with public engagement, while in reality the clearly commercial enterprise is
never interrupted.

Conclusion

What all of this points to is the preliminary
finding that the North Market does indeed help educate for neoliberal
sensibilities, even while it contains the seeds for its own subversion. This
amounts to what Foucault referred to as heterotopic space. Foucault describes
heterotopic spaces as fitting a number of criteria.[6]
First, the market is a space that has changed over time, most notably from a
site of daily necessity to a space for conspicuous consumption. Second, the
market is a space in which multiple spaces exist. It is simultaneously a space
of commerce, social gathering, law enforcement/policing, marketing (for the
city), and perhaps even a kind of “theme park.” Third, the market is linked to
“slices in time.” It acts as a museum, indefinitely collecting time through
artifacts on display and the historical narrative constructed for public view.
It also acts as festival, through its special events (like Fiery Foods Festival)
in particular. Finally, the market operates in relation to remaining space, in
this instance, the city of Columbus. For this criteria, the market acts as a
“real” space of commerce in relation to the normally messy practice of everyday
life in America. So, while I have focused on the neoliberal pedagogy of the
North Market, there are other stories to be told. Most evident from this
project, then, is the need to continue this line of research. There are still
numerous questions that need to be answered, and observing the market in spring
and summer will give me a more complete picture and most likely change my
findings.

---

[1] As
articulated by Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the
College de France, 1978-1979 (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

[2] Mark Cotè,
Richard J.F. Day, and Greig De Peuter, ed., Utopian Pedagogy: Radical
Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

[3] Giorel
Curran, 21^st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and
Environmentalism (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006). Reclaim the Streets organizes, among other things, seemingly
spontaneous “parties” in the middle of traffic intersections or on major
highways to disrupt traffic and draw attention to the way public space is used.

[4] http://www.revbilly.com/. Reverend Billy is
famous for coordinating direct situationist actions such as performing an
exorcism on the flagship Macy’s store in New York City during the Christmas
shopping season.

[5] It is unclear
as to what the “first” act of violence was and who committed it, but what is
clear is that the peaceful civil disobedience of the majority of the protestors
was met with an excessive (impressive?) display of state violence justified by
the destruction of property by some Black Block Anarchists.

[6] Foucault,
“Of Other Spaces.”

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend

Pedagogy of a Public Market – Part 2

Pedagogy
of the Market

Linking Past
to Present: “Presenting” the History of the North Market

One of my first observations is the series of
framed signs along the east wall that provide a historical account of the
market’s existence. Beginning in the 1800s, each sign accounts for a period of
time highlighting the role of the North Market in Columbus’ development from
frontier town to Midwestern metropolis. Toward the latter end of the historical
narrative is a discussion of the declining role of the market and its
subsequent revitalization. Integral to this historical revival is the North
Market Development Authority, which leases the market property from the city
and, in turn, leases space to the numerous vendors.

Whereas the market had once been fully public
space, it has, like many other spaces, become privatized in order to maintain
viability.[1]
Generally, it seems as if this privatization has been a good thing – the market
still exists. However, the historical account provided by the market tells the
story of inevitable and beneficent privatization. No conflict is highlighted in
the account; it is presented as a common sense solution to a market that was
once struggling within a changing urban environment. Indeed, the signs appear to
be intended to tie the current iteration of the market to an idealized past
where the market served as a major focal point for public gathering in
Columbus. This “presenting” of the past aids in marketing efforts.

Providing a historical narrative that locates
the contemporary market within a tradition that is highly populist and deeply
nostalgic (two things Americans seemingly cannot live without) helps realize
the North Market as hyperreal space.[2]
Eco points to Disney Land as the ultimate hyperreal space. Where “real” pirates
rub up against “real” American Main Street, Disney is completely imaginary,
while being thoroughly real. He notes, “The American imagination demands the
real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake.”[3]
It is in these hyperreal spaces where the copy becomes more real than the
original itself. Tying the contemporary market to the markets of the past is an
attempt to provide an air of authenticity, which attracts American consumers.
However, this process also marks out the market as a kind of exceptional space:
one that is rare, valuable for the public good, and historic in such a way as
to obligate citizen consumers to utilize the space in particular ways.

Educating
About Cheese: Buying and Selling at the Market

I am wandering the market without any
particular agenda today. I am still trying to get a sense of how people move
through the space, interact with one another and the merchants. I skirt around
a knot of people talking animatedly to one another near the foot of the
stairway that leads to the balcony seating area. After ducking under an arm
thrown outwards to emphasize some point, – “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you!” Don’t
worry about it, I survived, I reply with a
laugh – I find myself in front of a counter filled with cheeses. The deli case
I almost ran headfirst into is stickered with numerous signs with typed
descriptions of certain cheeses. The signs note the name of the cheese, provide
the country and region of origin, and describe the taste, texture, and smell.
Often there is a suggestion for what wine or other foods should be served with
the cheese. Intrigued, I approach the counter.

After looking into the case for a few moments a
woman in an apron approaches me from behind the counter. Her nametag reads “Sue.”[4]
She appears to be in her late 50s or early 60s. She is wearing hornrimmed
glasses, her hair reaches her chin and is salt and pepper colored, mostly salt.
She smiles.

“How
can I help you?” Hi, I’m looking to try something new. I like parmesan,
pecorino, and softer cheeses but I don’t remember their names. I don’t really
like bleu cheese or brie. What do you recommend, maybe a goat or sheep cheese?

Sue’s face
brightens, her tone of voice carries enthusiasm. It is clear that she enjoys
talking about her product. She asks a few more questions.

“Do
you like soft cheeses?” Yes.

She reaches into
the case.

“This
is our most popular cheese. It’s a French cheese, made from cow’s milk called
St. Nectaire. Would you like to try it?” I’d love to.

She cuts a thin
slice from it with an enormous knife (I was amazed at her ability to wield it
at all, let alone so deftly), places the cheese onto a piece of wax paper, and
hands it to me. I sniff at the thin slice, then ask,

Do
I eat the rind? “If you like. You don’t
have to.”

I pop the cheese
into my mouth. It is delicious. I ask for a small wedge to take home.  Like a good salesperson Sue asks me if
I would like to try another.

“I
have another cheese in mind for you. You said you like pecorino, was that
Tuscano or Romano?? Pecorino Toscano.  I ate it often when I lived in Florence. “Oh good, you’ll love this, it’s the Romano.

She cuts another
slice with the comically large knife. I order another wedge to take home with
me.

After the buying and selling is over, I inquire
about the signs in the deli case window. Sue informs me that they are a benefit
to the business. Even though every cheese is not described in the window signs,
they are enough to both attract attention (most people will read at least one
or two signs, even if they do not buy anything) and entice people to buy. Sue
shares that 30 to 50 per cent of customers are returning customers, depending
on the season. So, anywhere from 50 to 70 per cent are new customers, and many
of those people, she notes, are drawn in by the signs. When pressed further she
comments on the notion that she, along with many of the vendors at the market,
try to educate their customers about their product. This creates an ethos of
connoisseurship at the market, with a gastronomically educated clientele with
whom the vendors can engage. I suspect this serves at least two purposes.
First, many of the vendors are enthusiasts and like most enthusiasts love to
share their interests with others. Second, it appears that an ethos of
gastronomic connoisseurship facilitates the seeking out of more esoteric
foodstuffs, which seem to be fairly profitable for the vendors.

Unique challenges face the produce vendors,
including Curds and Whey. As the historical account of the North Market shows,
the market experienced a decline in consumer relevance and economic viability
from the end of World War II through the 1970s. In order to counter this
decline, the North Market Development Authority was created. Part of the
group’s success has been tying the market’s operation to the surrounding Arena
and Convention Center district, which meant that a number of the leased spaces
went to prepared-food vendors. Currently, less than half of the stalls are
dedicated to the buying and selling of produce, bulk goods, and other raw
materials, which have historically been the hallmarks of public markets. This
environment makes the “presenting” practices that seem to attract American
consumers all the more important, but it also means the produce vendors have to
work harder and harder to attract, educate, and retain consumers.

Learning
Space: Private Consumption Versus Public Gathering

There are groups of people of varying numbers
sitting at tables around the entire area. A student working with a laptop sits
alone at one table. A group of four men sit at another talking loudly about the
upcoming NFL Superbowl. A group of three middle-aged (around 45-50 by my
estimation) women sit talking and laughing at yet another table. It is a useful
space for eating the numerous food offerings from the first level. As a social
space, however, it is a differentiating space. The physical limitations of the
relatively narrow distance between wall and railing offer limited opportunity
to congregate in large groups. Instead, the space is far friendlier to small
groups, up to about 15 to 20 people if several tables are pushed together.
Beyond that, however, it seems like it would become difficult to hold any sort
of conversation as many in the group would not be able to see or hear others at
the far end of the table.

According to a pamphlet I picked up on my
initial tour of the market, the market has always been a site of gathering.

In 1876, the
market was the only place for people to find all of life’s necessities. Things
haven’t changed much. Throughout its history, the North Market has served most
importantly as a meeting place. Although today’s North Market may look
different from the original Market [sic]
built in 1876, the purpose of the Market remains the same. It’s a place where
people gather together, to shop, eat, mingle, and enjoy themselves.

 

It is clear that
the North Market remains a place where people shop, eat, mingle, and possibly
enjoy themselves. It is less clear, however, that the market retains its
identity as a gathering space in any more meaningful sense. At a micro level,
it is certain that people gather in the market. In my limited observations, I
was able to identify numerous groups of people conducting business, talking,
eating, and consuming. The longer I stayed, though, the more I realized that it
would be difficult to gather on a larger scale.

The physical limitation of the upper floor and
the obviously commercial use of space on the first level would hinder any large
gathering, demonstration or protest, or other coordinated action. In a sense,
the space is designed to keep private the gatherings in this ostensibly public
space. Unarmed security guards and armed police officers patrolled the ground
floor, asking people to keep at least a minimum amount of space open to keep
foot traffic moving. However, at the stalls attracting a larger crowd, the
requests were dropped, as the line was too long to move anywhere else. On the
upper levels, the space facilitated long, narrow groupings, which can easily
dictate the effectiveness of a speaker attempting to address a crowd. These
practices and limitations diffuse gatherings on a large scale.

The main purpose of the North Market is clearly
commercial. With this in mind, it becomes transparent that the market’s
function as a meeting place is elided with the practice of conspicuous
consumption. The produce, meat, and seafood vendors are local, organic,
earth-friendly businesses. The majority of the vendors are local and regional
franchises, with a majority being stand-alone, independent businesses. So,
while the market serves to attract a fairly liberal, eco-friendly,
activist-oriented crowd, a crowd perhaps more likely to value such a
community-oriented space, the value of the North Market as a meeting place is
undermined.

---

[1] Margaret
Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2004).

[2] Umberto Eco,
Travels in Hyperreality (Orlando, FL:
Harcourt Brace & Co., 1986).

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Even though
I am not disguising the name of the market or the particular vendor I am using
pseudonyms. I do not feel comfortable using real names because I did not secure
permission to do so.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend