Comments on: Eco-Chic Burning Man Hipsters

By: Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> The Green Modernist Vision

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:03:42 +0000

[…] and retreating into an artificial wilderness congealed in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, green chic has been riddled with contradictions and ascetic deprivation has still been found […]

By: Hackers, Hippies, and the Techno-Spiritualities of Silicon Valley | Savage Minds

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:54:10 +0000

[…] around Silicon Valley. I loved the idea of a Dutch anthropologist studying me and my friends in the eco-chic Burning Man hipster scene so I asked her to riff off of a few questions for this blog. Zandbergen talked about […]

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:33:17 +0000

Not denying that what you describe are tough problems. The concern is about the sloppy use of ‘contradiction,’ whose strict sense implies that there are only two alternatives and, if one is true, the other can’t be, as a synonym for ‘I can’t see how this can work.’ As it turns out, there is a large literature on this topic (alas, not by anthropologists). The usual move is to introduce a distinction between public and private goods, where the former are supplied in adequate amounts to every one as a matter of justice and the latter are freely traded for whatever the market will bear. The political issue then becomes where the boundary between public and private goods is drawn. Should medical care, for example, or wireless spectrum be public goods? I would say so. Others might disagree or introduce more subtle distinctions, e.g., making emergency trauma care a public good but cosmetic surgery a private good, reserving bandwidth for purposes regarded as public goods but putting the rest up to auction. This is where serious public policy debate begins. Competing utopias tend to be more a distraction than a true contradiction. Calling them one stops, instead ofe encouraging, fruitful discussion.

That, anyway, is how I see it.

By: Adam Fish

Adam Fish — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:18:57 +0000

The post has a bevy of examples. Here is one broken down:

Consider for instance how starting and operating a semi-alternative cable or satellite television network is a difficult operation requiring a large amount of economic capital as well as the social capital to acquire meetings with executives in order to get carriage on satellite and cable systems from companies that tend to be some of the most politically entrenched, conservative, and elite institutions in the world. Now you hook or by crook you get a slot on Comcast or Time-Warner–and you are going to set up your studio and sit there and daily critique media consolidation, the division of wealth, and government/corporate complicity for your possible viewership of 30 million. If a network like this succeeds it will do so by putting itself out of business. To me that is a wicked contradiction.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:52:09 +0000

‘Baldly incompatible’? Seems more like a statement of religious belief than a serious argument. How about some evidence, logic, or a compelling metaphor.

By: Adam Fish

Adam Fish — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:22:29 +0000

I don’t want to soften the contradiction by calling it friction. Its baldly incompatible. Whether they know it or are willing to admit it, the underlying desire of many of these movements is some revolution. It isn’t a semiotic problem, or me being dualistic. While the achievements remain partial failures and partial successes there is compatibility with these movements and neoliberalism. But if they were to achieve the success they claim to want in their branded quips and performances then it would be a post-capitalist world–or at least one with a radical democratic function which would out of definition and necessity oppose the division of wealth and labor that characterizes neoliberal political economies.

By: Andrew Galley

Andrew Galley — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:29:45 +0000

I would also like to hear more about how you’re defining “contradiction” in this context, and why you feel it’s more appropriate than, for example, “tension” or “competing interests/values”.

It’s a given, I think, that most people’s value systems are not free of *potential* conflicts or contradictions. What seems to matter more perhaps, with respect to questions of social justice, is the end results.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:48:58 +0000

Damn SM for making it impossible to edit comments. Should be ‘reasonable return’.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:46:56 +0000

Eco-chic, like many other socio-cultural manifestations of neoliberalism is rife with contradiction. The fundamental contradiction being that it is a social justice movement within consumer capitalism.

Adam, allow me to suggest that your use of ‘contradiction’ in this context amounts to nothing more than deployment of a radical chic buzzword (for ‘radical chic’ Google ‘Tom Wolfe’). Unless we sneak in the assumptions that (1) social justice is incompatible with people making money and (2) that there are no other reasonable metrics by which to judge when profit-taking becomes exploitation instead of reasonabe return.

Please consider the possibility that fashionable buzzwords block instead of facilitate thought.