Perfection and Pity: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

Human history is full of examples of our desire to be perfect, to create, to enjoy, to exploit what we believe is perfection. In the “Western” arts, this is a well-known leitmotif: from the statues of Greek gods to fictional depictions of beauty, from Bach’s music to Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings. Of course, morality, religion, societal mores, human relations all enter into the discussion of perfection and beauty. Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake (Vintage, 2009, pp. 389) adds to these considerations also feelings, especially the feeling of pity, the pity that pervades the reader for the protagonist, Snowman (Jimmy).

As in most speculative fiction, this novel, too, hinges on the events that precede and follow an apocalyptic event. The life of the characters in the pre-cataclysmic event is already far from perfect: specifically, the protagonist in his youth is basically a lonely boy looking for some kind of affection from his parents whose (pre-)occupations do not include him. Later on, he is enrolls in less prestigious art school for those young people who do not cut it in the sciences. Since he is “good with words”, he finds a job as an advertising copy writer. His friendship with Crake goes back to their youth, when they as little boys watch porn movies, play chess and computer games, and generally shun the rest of the children around them. This friendship brings him a more remunerative job, as Crake is the mind behind a very special project. This project aims to create a different (more perfect) human beings, starting with reorganizing the prepared embryo cells, so parents can choose a being who does not get sick, who has perfect physique, who does not crave sex, who is a vegetarian, etc. The private company already houses a group of the new perfect beings (physically beautiful) who are intellectually not ready to fend for themselves. So they have a teacher, Oryx, a woman who is the image of love for Snowman/Jimmy, but who is also loved by Crake. To prepare the possible embryos, a new sex pill is created which is tested all over the world without approval of any agency (in fact, there is no mention of any government or regulating agency in the book). This pill turns out to be the spark of the apocalypse, as it makes the users bleed to death. In the aftermath of a general almost complete excruciatingly painful human extinction, Jimmy takes over the care of the group of the perfect but ignorant human beings. This is the nutshell of the novel, as usual, it is impossible to do justice in this short paragraph to the complexities of it.

Although there is the usual note saying that the book is a work of fiction, to remind the reader that this may not be completely true, Atwood begins her narration by quoting from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. This quote ends by expressing the idea that “my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you”. In other words, by creating a fictional world, Atwood intends to inform us of what exactly is going on around us in this present point of history. My mention of pity at the beginning of this review points to the fact that each element of the novel, each move that Snowman/Jimmy makes, has equivalents in our present. And pity stems from the fact that neither we nor the protagonist can really do anything about the things that we know are done wrong. Jimmy/Snowman cannot fight against the system that separates people into have and have-nots (both economically and intellectually) – does this sound familiar? In the novel, private companies have all the power to do as they please – does this sound familiar? Even individuals act totally unscrupulously in the novel – does this sound familiar? especially as regards children bought from poor families and used in child porn films. What is there for the protagonist to do? How can he act against forces that are so entrenched in his environment but act within the confines of his world and try to survive by himself? The readers can only feel pity for him, as they also feel pity for themselves, for the pitiful world we live in, for all the injustices that are perpetrated by individuals and companies. The world has recently been through the Covid pandemic – what have we learned from it? Now there are wars, military conflicts, hate is compounded on top of hate ad infinitum. Atwood’s novel ends with the possibility that Snowman/Jimmy is not the only “normal” human alive in his world. Should we think of that possibility for us? And what happens when perfection – our version of what it should be – does not pan out to be really perfect? Must perfection and pity coexist?

More than ‘two solitudes’, or Cree (Canadian) and (Italian) Canadian fiction*

What adventures can a protagonist, self-identifying as a Cree, experience in the territory belonging to the Dakehl nation in Northern British Columbia as a school principal in the 2000s? Darrel J. McLeod’s character in A Season in Chezgh’un (Douglas&McIntyre 2013, pp. 320) undergoes a gamut of feelings, and a variety of expected and also unforeseen events. Although a fictional character, James not only gives the reader a really interesting and engaging look at the life stories of one of the First Nations people, but also provides numerous examples of emotions and events that closely resemble those of the characters in immigrant/Italian Canadian fiction.

James’s life story gives us examples of the atrocious history of abuse, maltreatment, neglect, discrimination of all First Nations peoples. Having experienced some of these, having lived without his father and with his alcoholic mother, having been caught in the web of sibling suicides and addiction, and suffering from sexual abuse by his white brother-in-law, James is, however, able to leave his Cree birthplace, study at the university, travel, enjoy varied cuisine, fashion, and music, live with his lover in a Vancouver apartment. All these experiences, however, not only make him insecure, but also extremely unhappy and he never feels that he belongs. He is aware of these negative pressures that his environment as well as himself put on him. And yet he does not give up: he compares himself to the sockeye salmon who leave fresh water to migrate great distances in the sea and then come back to their spawning grounds and die there. (p. 18) As an educator, he applies for, and receives, the position of a principal at a Dakehl school. His expectations (also muffled by his welcoming committee) soon make him realize that if he wants a real school, he has to build it himself. He is not undaunted as he joggles his ideas between the local/provincial school administrators and the elders of the community. He is truly happy when he sits at the shore of the lake and observes the wild life there or when he shares food with the Dakehl community, or when he participates in a ceremony with the tribe in a Mayan village. He is able to hire new, young staff, he promotes the cooperation with and experiential learning for the children and adults in his community. He observes the internal squabbles and the disagreements between and among the different tribes and is able to walk this tightrope with success, without making too strong enemies. His most successful projects are having the youth like the school, attend it and participate in all the activities, as well as having the elders take literacy classes that lead to participation in their political struggles. His feelings of being different in any and all circumstances are heightened because of his belonging to the gay community, with the concomitant fear of an HIV infection. He finds release from stress in sex. When he is offered to come and play the piano at the white neighbours, his answer illustrates not only his complex of inferiority but also his desperate need to be approved by others (p. 69):

“That’s generous, Louise. thank you.” James answered earnestly, although he knew he could never take her up on her offer. In addition to his shyness, his pride wouldn’t allow him to accept what felt like charity – the benevolence of someone in a position of privilege and wealth bestowed upon a lesser being. And then there was the optics of it all, if he were to be seen as being too cozy with the local gentrified white folks, what would the Native people he was working with think of him?

The novel concludes with James accepting another job and going to another post in Salmon Arm. On his way he swerves his car to avoid a beaver who nevertheless is injured; while James muses on the importance of this animal for his people, the animal jumps up and claws his thigh. The fact that beaver is also a national emblem of Canada, and this emblem injures him, is a clear metaphor for the impossibility for James to live in peace with his environment.

There is a metafictional element in A season in Chezgh’un when James reads Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais (the use of the word “season” in Mcleod’s title is interesting). James notices that the novel “recounts a story of poverty and oppression in rural Quebec, and it comes as close as any mainstream piece of literature has to capturing the reality that James, his siblings and cousins grew up in.” (p. 31) Besides mixing reality and fiction, this metafictional detail in McLeod’s writing gives away one of the most troublesome perspectives that Canadian fiction can have for an author that does not deem himself to be a Canadian. The desire to become an author of “mainstream” fiction is great. In Native authors’ case, though, this is a struggle which they wrestle with more than any other “ethnic” Canadian author, since they do not identify with Canadian culture, whereas the “immigrant” authors have to.

Although a comparison between Native-Canadian and ethnic-Canadian writing requires a full treatment, I will concentrate here only on points of convergence between themes and tropes common to the Cree-Canadian and Italian-Canadian prose (the Cree-Canadian is represented by only one novel, though). Therefore there is no discussion of differences in topics such as sexual abuse of young children (in the Natives’ cases but not mentioned in the Italian Canadian case, although rape is present), or the abuse lived through in residential schools suffered by the Natives (Italians in Canadian schools, just like any other “ethic” pupils received other types of discrimination in schools). The following common themes in stand out:

1. grappling with history: protagonists both Cree and Italian struggle to come to terms with the fact that they “lost” or are in fact losing the cultural certainties (language, beliefs, ancestors’ way of life, naming practices, etc.) which their ancestors had held for millennia.
2. impossibility to belong to any group, “mainstream” or indeed to one’s own: blatant and covert discrimination makes this even more profound.
3. intense desire to belong to the mainstream group, to be accepted and included, even though this desire clashes with the innermost feelings of the individual.
4. ancient belief systems shattered, i.e. in the case of the First Nations the perpetrators are the Catholic nuns and priests, in the case of Italians, it is also the Catholic priests who do not allow or do not understand certain pre-Christian beliefs to be practiced.
5. comparison with nature: James compares himself with the sockeye salmon, the trope in the Italian Canadian culture of the immigrant generations was the fig tree: it can survive in Canada, but it has to be bent out of shape and protected, covered in the winter.

In conclusion, A season in Chezgh’un underscores the necessity to go beyond the received truths about an individual’s life and their history. This is the lesson also from (Italian) Canadian fiction. And as we are now (2024) at the cusp of an unprecedented general cultural upheaval – the use of AI becoming so much more than simple aid to human life – what can the slash between pre-history and modernity teach us about the division between modernity (humanity, anthropocene) and bio-techno-world? If these processes can indeed be compared, humanity does not have much to rely on for support from the past. The two solitudes, representing Canadians and Natives/immigrants are truly becoming many solitudes.

___

*To be consistent, I should have written Molisan Canadian or Calabrian Canadian fiction to make it clear that the authors of Italian origin (or their ancestors) come from different parts of Italy, just like First Nations peoples come form different regions, and therefore have different cultures and languages. The Italian Canadian prose fiction which I base my comments on include Frank Paci’s Black Madonna, Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House, Where she has gone. Poetry requires another post, but one can start here: https://www.tlnoriginals.com/title-item/invisible-voices/.

“American Gods” or Gods in America?

In the Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition of American Gods (Harper Collins, 2011), Neil Gaiman claims that readers either hate or love this book. Well, I neither love nor hate it, but I am not sitting on the fence: Gaiman’s artistry shows on every page, as well as his ability to treat serious matter with a special sense of humor,  and his vivid imagination. Above all, the book does make you think deeply about the role of gods in human cultures, about the definition of sacrifice, about the relationship between love and violence, about what makes America tick, about the world’s obsession with America, etc. In other words, having read it was not for naught. The frustration and disappointment that reading American Gods brings with it spring from the fact that the book tries to be too many kinds of narrations all at the same time: fantasy story, horror/gothic novel, mystery novel, spiritual travelogue, essay on what happened to gods once brought to America by immigrants, musing on what defines America, definition of sacrifice, love, etc. Nevertheless, these may be its strong points, given that the novel has won prestigious awards. Rather than outlining the plot and discussing the settings and characters, here is my take on Gaiman’s contribution – by way of fiction –  to the eternal human fascination with gods.

Notions of “god”: human and divine perspectives

Gaiman’s basic premise underlying the idea of “god” is that gods are human creations which, once accepted, grow in significance and this makes their power amplified. Therefore, humans allow themselves be molded by these “home-made” beings, and hence they relinquish their own free will. It is a magic circle. Throughout the book, the god characters predict the future, foresee the characters’ behavior (specifically that of Shadow, the protagonist) and therefore negate the idea of free will.  Since gods are created by humans, their characteristics are human (the full list would take too much space): arrogance, avarice, fear, gluttony, megalomania,  nymphomania, underhandedness, violence; they are standoffish swindlers, and indifferent tricksters. That’s the human side. From the divine perspective of the gods themselves, matters are a bit more complicated.  They thrive on sacrifice but they are also easily hurt. They must fight for survival and existence anyway they can. One of the gods, Loki, having a conversation with Shadow, puts it this way:

You got to understand the god thing. It’s not magic. Not exactly. It’s about focus. It’s about being you, but the you that people believe in. It’s about being the concentrated, magnified essence of you. It’s about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief, all the prayers, and they become a kind of certainty, something that lets you become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystalize. … And then one day they forget about you, and they don’t believe in you, and they don’t sacrifice, and they don’t care, and the next thing you know you’re running a three-card monte game on the corner of Broadway and Forty-third.

Throughout the novel, the old gods, those that the immigrants brought with them on the boats, and on the planes, show their uneasy and by no means solid position in modern America: new gods are springing up which try to usurp the ancient divine forces, take away the offerings and deviate the sacrifices made to the old ones. The new gods are many and varied: money, power, cars, technology, TV, etc. When the old gods face the new ones in a ruthless, violent and brutal combat situation, each side sees the other as “demons, monsters, damned”. Both sides have a deathly fear of being ignored by the humans, of being abandoned, forgotten, rendered obsolete. Gaiman’s tongue-in cheek attitude receives its full force when he has Odin address the “armies” about to engage in battle. However, since they are tricksters on both sides, the reader suspects foul play even on the battlefield and beyond.

Whether by design or by the need to be inclusive, divinities include gods and goddesses from all corners of the earth:  Odin ad víly, dwarfs and Mama-ji, Thunderbird and Easter. Jesus does not appear in the book since, as the author notes in the Afterword, he plans to have Shadow meet him in another narration.

Sacrifice

Gaiman presents the stance of “tradition against innovation”. The old gods, those that require the physical human sacrifice, i.e., human death, especially of children or youth, are about to lose their position to the new gods. For these, sacrifice is of a different type: human time, attention, focus, interest, i.e., human life. Only the protagonist, Shadow, with whom we are journeying through America, seems to be able to offer both types of sacrifice. But Shadow sacrifices on many additional levels: he sacrifices his time by spending three years in jail, (for doing something illegal on the instigation of his wife, Laura), he sacrifices his love life by being faithful only to Laura (whose character is least elaborated, even though she appears on a number of occasions). So the notion of “sacrifice” is watered down, and almost of no use for a serious definition of its function. This mirrors the devaluation of the traditional native sacred places, most of which in America (and many parts of the world, I have to add), become simply destinations for buying a T-shirt or a souvenir trinket, with the new purpose of tourist visits: photography.

Sacrifices to the old gods were always accompanied by specific pre-determined  rites. with the worship of the old gods on the wane, rites too, transform their meaning to secular uses and become easily changed. The new gods do not care about rites at all.

America

All in all, America “is a bad land for gods” because the old ones are rendered obsolete and the new ones are quickly cast aside for the “next big thing”. There is no space for transformation, or an amalgam of the two,  which normally happens when gods of two different cultures meet: they become an amalgam of the familiar and the unfamiliar. (See, for ex., Joseph Campbell, Goddesses. Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. New World Library, 2013). Gaiman presents the vastness of America, its varied and disjointed cultures connected by the thread of money, violence, and technology. This could be the author’s warning: by dehumanizing, many aspects of the human are lost, first of which is gods. However, Gaiman, a trickster himself, does not mourn this fact. The question remains, therefore, what actually happens when the old gods disappear (beyond making human sacrifice a thing of the past).

In the novel, the very first sacrifice on American soil was the one offered to Odin by the Vikings of a native man. Despite the fact that human sacrifices to the old gods are decreasing,  the tone of violence that is part and parcel of American colonization and culture is only increasing: in the novel, physical violence is almost never of the sacred kind.

In conclusion, the novel gives Gaiman a platform on which to use all of his talents. Given that the author skillfully compels the readers to follow the vicissitudes of the protagonist, new ideas are created constantly. One final thought: perhaps the title American Gods does not really reflect the novel’s content: the book is more about (Some) Gods in America.

Will marriage survive?

Nowadays, marriage can be defined as the legal union of two consenting adults for the purpose of setting up a home conducive to fulfilling cohabitation, possibly to create offspring. To answer the question in the title, it is instructive to examine the history of this union. Elizabeth Abbott’s A History of Marriage (Penguin, 2010) provides an excellent route for the detailed chronicle of the development of marriage specifically in Canada and the United States.

Abbott makes it perfectly clear that marriage shapes and is shaped by human aspirations, needs, and institutions: from equality to sexuality, from architecture to economy, from gender to offspring. She also underlines the fact that marriage is not an utter necessity for everyone, because it seems that throughout history, at least a third of the population has lived and lives, for various reasons, the life of the single.

The book has two parts: Part One deals with Marriage in History, Part Two concentrates on Marriage in the Present and Future. In Part One, the focus is on describing the social and religious pressures towards marriage from the Middle Ages (in Europe) to the nineteenth century (in Canada and the US), such as the individual’s economic situation, the subordinate position of women, the double sexual standard for men, the progressive idealization of the wife as the angel of the hearth, the difficulties of getting out of marriage, effects of economic status on marriage and raising children. Part Two chronicles the transformations of social views and policies on gender equality in marriage, both from the perspective of male-female marriage roles, and gay/lesbian unions, as well as the changing views of having and raising children, tax implications of marriage, the problematic racial policies, legal conditions regarding divorce, society’s insistence on consumerism in marriage (such as extravagance of weddings, the idea that children work to buy their own consumer products, etc.). The chapters are truly instructive, especially chapter 14 (Issues at the Heart of the Marriage Debate). These issues do not have clear and univocal answers and continue to make choices within marriage difficult. Listing these issues can help to provide possible directions for the future of marriage. These are, in the author’s words, Women become persons; Equity, love, work; Same-sex equity; The mating game; Parenting; Divorce. There is also a surprising and refreshing Epilogue (entitled Stop Sign), in which Abbott presents answers to two questions she received from readers: “Does marriage have a future?” and “Are you for marriage or not?”.

Marriage has undergone drastic changes from the prearranged, finance-based, men-centered union for the purpose of procreation. The union aspired to now tends to be love-focused, egalitarian, fulfilling for both individuals. This view, or “myth”, creates its own challenges for both wives and husbands. Firstly, it is more difficult to find one’s soul mate, and people turn to technology to be their matchmaker. According to Abbot, more attention should be paid to how mates are selected, and she proposes more stringent set of requirements for dating sites which are in the business of connecting people for the purposes of marriage. Secondly, it is still not clear what equity in marriage means, and how this union of equals unfolds. Third, love, although an indispensable and indisputable raison d’être for marriage, flourishes also independently of marriage. According to Abbott, “Infidelity is a marriage-related problem that also questions the meaning of erotic and romantic love.” (p. 385). Fourth, deep-rooted misogyny permeates the thinking of many young men whose masculinity is now defined as “a performance to be won in the marketplace, not the workplace … An ornamental culture encourage[s] young men to see surliness, hostility, and violence as expressions of glamour”, according to Faludi (quoted by Abbott, p. 387). Economic crises exacerbate the feelings of disrespect and worthlessness. All these negatives have an effect on marriage. Fifth, parenting, including step-parenting and blended family (which according to Abbott is the family of the future) has still unresolved problems, specifically, child-care is not a priority either in Canada or the US (“North American child-care policies lag far behind society’s ideas and standards about children, even while the nature of the family structure has significantly shifted”. Abbott, p. 314).

In conclusion, Abbott’s description of marriage in history and its recent developments forms a solid ground on which to build firm ideas about marriage in general, or one’s own, in particular – whether one intends to marry or not. Two matters that the author does not mention, but which are relevant to our ideas of marriage: 1. history of the word “marriage” in English (and in other languages) sheds some light on the past, and 2. technology in all its aspects which has had and will have disruptive impacts on all human institutions. As for the term “marriage”, it first appears in English in the mid-fourteenth century and it is a borrowing from French (mariage). It would be interesting to investigate whether the ceremony is also a borrowing from French, and which customs of the Old and Middle English wedlock (the act of pledging) were retained in real-life unions. It is instructive to note that some cultures have two words for marriage: one that applies to women, another to men (for ex., Latin ducere uxorem: literally “lead a wife”, i.e. “take a wife”, said of a man; some Southern Italian dialects used to have the terms maritarsi (take a husband) and nzurarsi (take a wife), now replaced by the Italian term sposarsi; Slovak has vydať sa (take a man) and oženiť sa (take a woman). As for technology, it is already a part of the dating process, and by some estimates, 3/5 of marriages are the result of on-line dating sites. There are other considerations, however: although Abbott mentions that some parents work from home, it is still unclear what effect this has on the partner and on raising children. Furthermore, if technology is indeed to enhance the physical and cognitive prowess of humans, and one’s gender can be exchanged at will (as some claim – see Humanity + /transhumanism), this will surely have profound effects on all human institutions, and marriage in the first place. Technology-assisted procreation is not a new phenomenon, and designer-babies may be next: the impact of this on marriage cannot be overlooked. For now, one can only conclude with the Italian saying, “chi vivrà, vedrà” (literally, those who live, will see it, i.e. time will tell). But it only underscores the necessity to be informed and to take advantage of research, such as this one conducted by Abbott, to be aware of human institutions and what is positive/negative in them.

I

Call for Academic Papers: Technology and (un)employment from the Italian perspective

CSIS Annual Conference in Ottawa (May 11-13, 2018)

 Italian Studies: Technology and (Un)employment 

Organizers: Antonio Marturano (Università Tor Vergata, Roma) and Jana Vizmuller-Zocco (York University, Toronto).

This session aims to investigate the cultural implications of technology and (un)employment from the perspective of Italian Studies. Expressions of the impact that technological advancements have on work are part and parcel of Italian culture (in films, such as Io e Caterina; in novels, for ex., of Paolo Volponi, or Francesco Verso;  in visual art: Futurismo, etc.).

Technology has come to replace human workers not only in repetitive tasks but also in more complex occupations. Technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence keep developing rapidly; the trend indicates  that no occupation or profession will be immune to technological progress. The proponents of technology extol its beneficial aspects for humanity (medical, lifestyle, etc.), and the critics propose various doomsday scenarios (general unemployment, economic divide, hopelessness, etc.). But the consensus from both sides appears to lay in increased education and re-training both to keep working, as well as keep oneself otherwise occupied.

Contributions which take account of the writings of philosophers, political thinkers, literary critics, such as Antonio Gramsci, Giorgio Agamben, Gianni Vattimo, Alberto Abbruzzese are welcome.

Topics to be explored include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Italian approaches  to technological (un)employment: educational, philosophical, social, political, economic, literary, etc.
• Italian popular culture and technological (un)employment: film, science fiction, i gialli, music,  etc.
• Italian Weltanschauung with regards to technological (un)employment
• Pedagogical strategies and curricula contents vis-à-vis technological (un)employment
• Role of Italian studies in view of reduced workload or jobless future
• Italian (im)/(e)migration, technological change, and work
• Italian language and technological (un)employment

 

Please submit an abstract in English or Italian and a short bio to a.marturano@gmail.com and jvzocco@yorku.ca,  by February 15, 2018.

______________________

** CSIS Annual Conference in Ottawa (May 11-13, 2018)  http://canadiansocietyforitalianstudies.camp7.org/Conference-2018

For information on CSIS News or to post a message, please contact the List Manager, Dr Maria Laura Mosco, at csisnewslist@gmail.com

McDonald’s, or the irrationality of rationality

For anyone interested in the intricacies of contemporary society from the perspective of such an ubiquitous  institution as the fast food outlet McDonald’s, George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (Pine Forge Press, 2000) is a must read. This is not a treatise against fast food outlets, nor is it a simple acceptance of them. The book  endeavours to account for the hold fast food outlets (and other institutions) have on society as well as provide possible ways out of this hold. The slender volume fulfills the former aim more successfully than the latter.

Ritzer suggests that there are four main dimensions which underpin McDonald’s business acumen: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through nonhuman technology. Efficiency basically means “the optimum method for getting from one point to another” (p. 12). Calculability subsumes such notions as “the quantitative aspects of … portion size, cost… and services”, where “quantity has become equivalent to quality” (p. 12). Predictability is “the assurance that products and services will be the same over time and in all locales” for both clients and workers (p. 13).  Control through nonhuman technology includes, among others, quickly moving customer lines at the counter, limited menus, few options, uncomfortable seats, in addition to precise directives for the workers to behave and to accomplish their roles. The four dimensions then form what Ritzer termed McDonaldization, a process found in all human for-profit institutions. He gives specific examples as this process relates to universities, hospitals, sports and other recreational activities,

Clearly, and very generally, there are advantages and disadvantages to these four dimensions: advantages point to profit-making and customer satisfaction to a certain extent; disadvantages to workers’ and customers’ personal preferences, food safety and quality. Ritzer’s critique is based on the fact that it is impossible to go back to “the world, if it ever existed, of home-cooked meals, traditional restaurant dinners, high-quality foods, meals loaded with surprises, and restaurants run by chefs free to express their creativity.” (p. 18). For him, it is more valid to critically analyze McDonaldization from the perspective of the future. Although he admits that McDonaldization is both enabling and constraining, his stance in the book focuses on the constraints this type of business system bring to human society.

Ritzer uses Max Weber’s theory of rationalization, claiming that McDonaldization is an amplification and an extension of this theory. (p. 23) According to Weber, formal rationality is a process by which optimum means to a given end are shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures, often resulting in irrational outcomes (among the examples given are ClubMed and the Holocaust). The means constrain humans to act according to a predetermined set of procedures and allow for little or no choice. However, humans are rarely content with being constrained: they prefer to make their own choices, so the irrationality of rationality closes them in an iron cage of scientific management. Ritzer describes McDonaldization in detail as it is clearly followed in automotive assembly lines, Levittown type of construction, shopping centers, and McDonald’s. The bulk of the book is devoted to an exemplification and critique of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through nonhuman technology., especially focusing on the following settings: higher education, entertainment industry (amusement parks, sport TV programs, etc.), health care, fast food industry, food industry. Chapter 7, “The Irrationality of Rationality”, evaluates the design flaws of rationality from the perspective of the loss of magic and mystery, inefficiency, illusion of good value at a good price, false friendliness, environmental hazards, homogeneization, dehumanization. The next chapter goes beyond present-day practices and looks toward the future by giving McDonaldization  “an inexorable quality, multiplying and extending continuously” (p. 146), from birth of an individual to death and beyond.  The last two chapters show the driving forces pushing McDonaldization along: “It pays, we value it, it fits” (p. 168) and a practical guide to dealing with this inexorable process, listing some of the suggestions for breaking the imposed “rules”, such as valuing quality (not quantity), B&Bs (rather than hotel chains), slow food, local produce and products, avoiding routines, do things for yourself, never buy artificial products, etc. In one of the last paragraphs, Ritzer justifies the writing of this book as follows:

      Although I have emphasized the irresistibility of McDonaldization throughout this       book, my fondest hope is that I am wrong. Indeed, a major motivation behind this book is to alert readers to the dangers of McDonaldization and to motivate them to act to stem its tide. I hope that people can resist McDonaldization and create instead a more reasonable, more human world. (p. 232)

In conclusion, Ritzer’s account and critique of McDonaldization point to the cage of every “modern” human being. His attempt to stem the tide of rationalization may work for a while, but then it is inevitable that profit wins over any other consideration. What is more disheartening is the fact that both McDonaldization (the irrationality of rationality) in conjunction with the absurd  rush for technological innovation at all cost deny a less forceful development of the future human being. The book evaluates the notions that many have had about the modern world, such as fear of unpredictability (and the concomitant drive to organization: ClubMed web site claims that it “organizes unforgettable events”), the burden is on the user (customers, patients, students do work formerly done by paid employees as part of efficiency). While Ritzer delves into activities and institutions such as home cooking, shopping, higher education, health care, entertainment (all-inclusive trips, TV programs, sports, political debates),  his analysis does not touch upon the workings of politics (exemplified by state/national governments – although he analyzes the irrational dealings of the tax offices), nor the advances in the military. It seems that governments and the military complex are either immune to McDonaldization and/or support it wholeheartedly for the citizens of the world. Another question which remains unanswered for me is this: Can search for a more equitable, peaceful and tranquil human life be McDonaldized? If the answer is yes, there is no escaping the rationality cage; if not, whose duty is to keep searching?

Second Call for Academic Articles for a Special Issue of “Ethics and Social Welfare”

SECOND CALL FOR ACADEMIC PAPERS: Ethics and Social Welfare  Special Issue on

Technology-driven unemployment:

dilemmas for ethics and social welfare

Guest editors:  Antonio Marturano (University of Rome, Tor Vergata, Italy)     and                                   Jana Vizmuller-Zocco (York University, Canada)

Rationale: In Praise for Idleness (1935), Bertrand Russell claimed that “We have the technology and infrastructure to greatly reduce the forced workload of the average human, and that should be our goal—to liberate people from excessive work so that they can freely pursue the things that bring them intrinsic joy and happiness.” Russell’s optimistic vision regarding the role of technology advocates for work reduction which would increase human welfare and liberate people to be able to devote their time to culture and leisure. His optimism does not seem to be justified in light of recent economic and technological developments which lead to serious unemployment rather than cheerful work reduction. The loss of jobs due to technological innovations is starting to reach crisis proportions as many scholars (such as David F. Noble, Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance, Between the Lines, 1995) and popular press warn (for ex., Eduardo Porter, “Jobs Threatened by Machines: A Once ‘Stupid’ Concern Gains Respect”, The New York Times, June 7, 2016).   There are indeed many voices which decry the unemployment situation exasperated by the replacement of humans by machines, and apparently no job is likely to be immune. The World Technology Network forecasts that “Accelerating technological unemployment will likely be one of the most challenging societal issues in the 21st Century”. Although the scholarly work published on the topic focuses mainly on the technical, technological, and market side, assessments which consider the ethical and social welfare implications of technological unemployment are still to be addressed in detail. The submissions to the special issue will contribute to setting the agenda for this serious and timely discussion. Topics to be explored from theoretical as well as practical perspectives include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• The role of governmental institutions in technological unemployment
• Jobless future: is unconditional basic/universal income the answer?
• Social, political, and economic approaches to welfare in a jobless future
• New ethical dimensions of work originating from the technological unemployment crisis
• Political and social inequality created by a jobless future
• Strategic plans for skills, education, re-deployment for the technologically jobless
• The political control of technological unemployment
• Welfare, leadership and jobless future
• Technological displacement vs technological innovation from the perspective of social welfare
• Historical visions on the ethical impacts of workload reduction
• Creating new values for a jobless future
• Political values in welfare and technological disruption in the job market
• Work as human value
• Conflicting values in a jobless world (for ex., the refugees crisis in the EU)
• Religious values and technological unemployment

Brief for contributors: In line with the editorial aims of the journal, this call for papers focuses specifically on the relationship between ethics, welfare, and values implicated in the policies and political strategies on the one hand and technologically-driven unemployment on the other. The editors welcome academic papers which are interdisciplinary in character. Contributions may combine wider ethical and theoretical questions concerning technology-driven unemployment with practical considerations leading to social policies and professional practices (especially the existing and future policies of local/national governments and international institutions, such as EU, UN, WTO to cope with the problems of technological joblessness). The special issue, as with other issues of the journal, welcomes material in a variety of formats, including high quality peer-reviewed academic papers, reflections, debates and commentaries on policy and practice, book reviews and review articles. Academic papers should be between 4-7,000 words long, and practice papers should be between 750-2,500 words long. Please consult the style rules laid-out on the journal’s website: http://www.tandfonline.com/resw. All academic papers will be double-blind peer- reviewed in the normal way.  Practice papers will be considered for publication by the editors. 

Procedure and timelines

• Call for Papers and invitations disseminated starting from the 1st of October 2016.
• Completed first drafts of papers are due by the 23rd of July 2017 and must be submitted to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/resw. Author’s instructions for academic and practice papers can be found on the journal website at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/resw20 .
• Final (revised) versions must be submitted by the 18^th of June 2018.
• Final confirmation of paper acceptance by the 30^th September 2018.
• Papers published in the first issue of Volume 13, 2019.

 

Social Media: Implications for the University

The purpose of this volume is to offer a balanced critical reflection on the role of social media in the workings of the engaged university. The 15 contributors analyze, critique, and explore the rich ideological and pragmatic relationships ensuing from the intersection between social media and academic life. This book is the sixth volume in the Social Theory: Communication and Media Studies published by Aracne Editrice (Rome). Its contents are definitely of interest to 1. those who work or have a stake in modern academia, as well as 2. those who observe the radical transformations of the manner in which knowledge is shred, elaborated, and used in contemporary life and 3. those who reflect on the unforeseen ramifications of technological advances. Moreover, many contributions have readers step outside of the classroom, presenting bridges especially to the arts communities: bridges that would have been impossible even 5 years ago. Oftentimes, edited volumes are criticized for “unevenness”, but the pleasure deriving from reading various ideological perspectives on, and multifaceted illustrations of the same general topic overrides any “unevenness”. The individual voice of each of the contributors is clear and purposeful.  It is hoped that the volume engages all the crucial players in today’s academic life and that the contributions may reach those who work as platform designers, making the most of (automated) connectivity and (human) connectedness (J. Van Dijck’s terms). In times such as these, when the end of many human occupations and professions are being placed in the hands of robots, questions should be asked also of what will become of the engaged and purposeful university – and it is without doubt that social media will have a significant role to play in the spread of knowledge. Decisions must be made regarding the balance between academic gatekeepers and technological gatekeepers: this volume provides a number of starting points in order to reach satisfactory answers.

The book is available from http://www.aracneeditrice.it/aracneweb/index.php/pubblicazione.html?item=9788854897427.

 

 

Technology-driven unemployment: dilemmas for ethics and social welfare

This is a call for articles to be published in a Special Issue of the journal Ethics and Social Welfare.

 

In Praise for Idleness (1935), Bertrand Russell claimed that “We have the technology and infrastructure to greatly reduce the forced workload of the average human, and that should be our goal—to liberate people from excessive work so that they can freely pursue the things that bring them intrinsic joy and happiness.” Russell’s optimistic vision regarding the role of technology advocates for work reduction which would increase human welfare and liberate people to be able to devote their time to culture and leisure. His optimism does not seem to be justified in light of recent economic and technological developments which lead to serious unemployment rather than cheerful work reduction. The loss of jobs due to technological innovations is starting to reach crisis proportions as many scholars (such as David F. Noble, Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance, Between the Lines, 1995) and popular press warn (for ex., Eduardo Porter, “Jobs Threatened by Machines: A Once ‘Stupid’ Concern Gains Respect”, The New York Times, June 7, 2016).   There are indeed many voices which decry the unemployment situation exasperated by the replacement of humans by machines, and apparently no job is likely to be immune. The World Technology Network forecasts that “Accelerating technological unemployment will likely be one of the most challenging societal issues in the 21st Century”. Although the scholarly work published on the topic focuses mainly on the technical, technological, and market side, assessments which consider the ethical and social welfare implications of technological unemployment are still to be addressed in detail. The submissions to the special issue will contribute to setting the agenda for this serious and timely discussion. Topics to be explored from theoretical as well as practical perspectives include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• The role of governmental institutions in technological unemployment
• Jobless future: is unconditional basic/universal income the answer?
• Social, political, and economic approaches to welfare in a jobless future
• New ethical dimensions of work originating from the technological unemployment crisis
• Political and social inequality created by a jobless future
• Strategic plans for skills, education, re-deployment for the technologically jobless
• The political control of technological unemployment
• Welfare, leadership and jobless future
• Technological displacement vs technological innovation from the perspective of social welfare
• Historical visions on the ethical impacts of workload reduction
• Creating new values for a jobless future
• Political values in welfare and technological disruption in the job market
• Work as human value
• Conflicting values in a jobless world (for ex., the refugees crisis in the EU)
• Religious values and technological unemployment

Brief for contributors: In line with the editorial aims of the journal, this call for papers focuses specifically on the relationship between ethics, welfare, and values implicated in the policies and political strategies on the one hand and technologically-driven unemployment on the other. The editors welcome academic papers which are interdisciplinary in character. Contributions may combine wider ethical and theoretical questions concerning technology-driven unemployment with practical considerations leading to social policies and professional practices (especially the existing and future policies of local/national governments and international institutions, such as EU, UN, WTO to cope with the problems of technological joblessness). The special issue, as with other issues of the journal, welcomes material in a variety of formats, including high quality peer-reviewed academic papers, reflections, debates and commentaries on policy and practice, book reviews and review articles. Academic papers should be between 4-7,000 words long, and practice papers should be between 750-2,500 words long. Please consult the style rules laid-out on the journal’s website: http://www.tandfonline.com/resw. All academic papers will be double-blind peer- reviewed in the normal way.  Practice papers will be considered for publication by the editors. 

For any further information, contact Prof. Antonio Marturano (marturano@btinternet.com) and Prof. Jana Vizmuller-Zocco (jvzocco@yorku.ca).

Procedure and timelines

• Call for Papers and invitations disseminated starting from the 1st of October 2016.
• You may wish to submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to marturano@btinternet.com and to jvzocco@yorku.ca by the 19^th of March 2017. Author’s instructions for academic and practice papers can be found on the journal website at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/resw20.

Submitters will be informed about the outcome as soon as possible after this date.

Abstracts should include 1. The essential content, argument, and methodology of the submission, 2. The submission’s aims and conclusions, 3. The relationship of the submission to the aims and scope of the journal.

• Completed first drafts of papers are due by the 23rd of July 2017 and must be submitted to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/resw.
• Final (revised) versions must be submitted by the 18^th of June 2018.
• Final confirmation of paper acceptance by the 30^th September 2018.
• Papers published in the first issue of Volume 13, 2019.                                                                                                                                                                       

‘Technological unemployment’

The World Technology Network forecasts that “Accelerating technological unemployment will likely be one of the most challenging societal issues in the 21st Century”. (http://www.wtn.net/technological-unemployment-summit). Although in the last 10 years or so various scholars have tackled the issue of technological joblessness from technological, political, and psychological perspectives, the language used to refer to this type of unemployment has as yet to be analyzed. What follows is then the first attempt to make sense of this topic from a roughly semantic point of view as illustrated by English usage.

Technological unemployment and its synonyms

The most striking linguistic process is the birth of the meaning of the phrase technological unemployment itself. At a first glance, the meaning of the phrase is relatively simple: “unemployment caused by technologically-driven labor-saving or efficiency-saving processes”. But the adjective “technological” normally does not carry a causal meaning:   other phrases, such as technological change, technological advancements, refer to change in/of technology, or advancements in/of  technology. The adjective in these instances then refers intrinsically to technology itself. In  the phrase technological unemployment, the meaning of “technological” does not refer to “technology” in the same way, i.e., it is not “unemployment in/of technology”. Clearly, it is the meaning of “unemployment” which begs for a causal sense. Some of the phrase’s synonyms are technological joblessness, disruptive technologies, replacement of workers, reduction of job classification, technological efficiency. Whichever side of the debate one is on, it is clear that these phrases carry within themselves positive and negative connotations: it is usually the technologists who believe that yes, “technological unemployment” creates unemployment, but it also drives the search for other types of jobs;  “disruptive technologies” disrupt, but may also create other jobs; “replacement of workers” causes joblessness but also “amplifies people” (Sikka), “complements workers” (according to Irving Wladawsky-Berger quoted in The Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/11/06/technological-unemployment-and-the-future-of-work/)  . It must be pointed out that it was customary to refer to blue-collar, unskilled or semi-skilled work as bearing the brunt of unemployment caused by technology, as human manual labor is being replaced by machines. But examples of AI encroaching on professional types of work (surgeons, instructors, lawyers, etc.) illustrate that no occupation or profession is “safe” from being replaced by machines . It is also interesting that many publications deal with the “future of unemployment”, which means basically types of jobs that will be less prone to be replaced by machines, i.e. relying on the accepted notions of employment.

Meaning, function, and nature of work

Anyone interested in “technological unemployment” cannot but muse about the meaning, function, and nature of the concept “work”. In what is hoped will become a decisively seminal work entitled The Refusal of Work (London: Zed Books, 2015), David Frayne dissects the nature of our present meaning of the term “work” and analyzes those cases of “workers” who themselves decided to work less.

This, of course, is yet another take on “unemployment”, and, in many ways, contradicts the logical bases of both the neoliberal capitalist  system and furnishes more fuel to that aspect of postmodern culture which underlines the fact that “the burden is on the user/worker/individual”.

If we identify ourselves by the job we hold, then it is a tragedy to lose this job and become unemployed: we lose our identity, our life-purpose, our Weltanschauung. This work-based perspective of human life is so ingrained in many cultures that it is even enshrined in at least one country’s Constitution (the example of which Frayne could have used to bolster his arguments): Article 1 of the Italian Constitution states that “L’Italia è una Repubblica democratica, fondata sul lavoro” (Italy is a democratic republic founded on work).

Notwithstanding this incorporation of the function of work in one way or another in all societies, it is clear that the notion of  “work”/ “job” /”remunerated occupation” belongs to yet another of the “big narratives” which are being shattered in late modernity/postmodernity. Clearly then even those philosophical views which take into account work as something different from leisure (for ex.,  Bertrand Russell), start being insufficient.

Even if it is obvious that the notion of the meaning of “work” is dramatically being transformed, many urgent questions remain which await clear answers. These answers should assist humans rather than bypassing them. Here are just three which deal with “technological unemployment”:

1.  What types of employment are necessary for humans to thrive?

2.  What role (if any) does education play in creating “the good life?”

3.  Is the concept of “work” a useful cognitive tool?

These questions, unfortunately but excitingly, lead to reconsidering the meaning of the term “humanity” which, crucially, is totally lacking in discussions using  the phrase “technological unemployment”.

___

Additional material which insist on efficiency (economic and technological side) only rather than looking at the problem also from a human point of view:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966?utm_content=buffer2a746&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer