Keeping up with The Times

This past Sunday, the Times reported on an anthropological study based at UCLA. The Center on the Everyday Lives of Families amassed a video record of 32 dual-earner, middle-class families totaling 1,540 hours. They just finished transcribing and coding it. Wow.

Disclaimer: As a graduate student, I was affiliated with a sister center at the University of Michigan.

Among the findings that the Times reported in its article:

Mothers still do most of the housework, spending 27 percent of their time on it, on average, compared with 18 percent for fathers and 3 percent for children (giving an allowance made no difference).

Husbands and wives were together alone in the house only about 10 percent of their waking time, on average, and the entire family was gathered in one room about 14 percent of the time. Stress levels soared — yet families spent very little time in the most soothing, uncluttered area of the home, the yard.

...

In addition to housework, mothers spent 19 percent of their time talking with family members or on the phone, and 11 percent taking occasional breathers that the study classified as “leisure.” The rates for fathers were 20 percent chatting, and 23 percent leisure — again, taken in fragments.

Hmm. What is this leisure "in fragments" of which the Times speaks? Is this the few minutes I took after supper, while Beanie used the potty and Bubbie tried sitting on his (I am happy to see him exhibiting "potty-readiness"), to read Katha Pollitt's column in the issue of The Nation that just arrived b/c I really just did not feel like, for example, folding the basket of laundry that was sitting at my feet?

Interestingly, the researchers also reported this:

The couples who reported the least stress tended to have rigid divisions of labor, whether equal or not. “She does the inside work, and I do all the outside, and we don’t interfere” with each other, said one husband.

That makes sense to me. StraightMan and I divide our care of kids and home more or less right down the middle. The moments when things feel like they are breaking down are the moments when one of us messes with the other's schedule (I attribute the stress of this more to having to manage a change at the last minute) or worse, meddles with the other's plan or method. I think we basically parent by two rules: (1) We back each other in the moment and avoid disagreement or contradiction in front of the kids (but we admit when we have been mistaken and apologize, to the kids as well) and (2) When one parent is solo in charge of the kids, the other parent does not criticize how he or she manages (like letting kids watch TV).

Actually, now that I have articulated them, I realize they are less rules to parent by and more rules to maintain marriage by.

Dismal science

Finally finished reading what I found to be a fascinating and somewhat maddening article in the May 17th issue of The New Yorker - a profile of Esther Duflo, a development economist who directs MIT's Poverty Action Lab. Finally b/c I read it in spurts of a few paragraphs in the mornings, here and there between making ham and cheese for Beanie's lunch and pouring more Cheerios for Bubbie and brushing my own teeth. Such is my life.

The article describes Duflo's work - the economics of poverty, which necessarily means looking not only at poor "people" but poor "nations" (and rich people and rich nations) - and her particular approach to it - running randomized clinical trials of economic interventions in order to be able to compare their effects.

It was interesting to me to read that "the dominant economic model of the poor was that they were 'poor but efficient' - that is, they acted with the same freedom and self-interest as the wealthy" - that simply recognizing this might not be true represented a paradigm shift in development economics. For me, this illustrates not that the pointy heads miss what seems like a big duh, but that science works in a controlled and exacting manner. Even radical transformations require talking in the terms of the discipline. For better and worse.

In the article, Duflo contends that too much development policy has been implemented (and too much development aid invested) without really knowing whether or not the interventions work. "We have no idea. We're not better than the medieval doctors and their leeches," she is quoted during a presentation that she gives.

Really? I mean, do we really not know what is good or bad for poor people and poor nations?

This is where I wish to return to the idea that talking in the terms of the discipline works for better and worse. When Duflo claims that "we" have no idea, it seems to me worth asking exactly who is this "we." At first, I found the idea of randomized trials intriguing, even promising, but the further along I read, the more I started to feel outside Duflo's "we."

Silly rabbit. Such tricks are for the stakeholders of development - not poor people or poor nations, but the rich people and rich nations that implement and invest development policy and aid. That is the "we" interested in efficacy and efficiency. Those are the kind of "we" (not me) that might be expected to read The New Yorker. I imagine that others like me might become absorbed into the "we" as they become convinced by reading the article?

I was not, or I am not. I admit that I side with bleeding heart Friend of Bono economist Jeffrey Sachs, who commented that "careful measurement and comparisons are, of course , vital" - that is what StraightMan and other development anthropologists also observe and study - but that, "if I go into a village without bed nets, it pains me." I think this gets to the point that poverty is like disease (with which it is shown to be correlated) in that withholding a therapy known to work (which I believe bed nets have been) runs counter to research ethics even or especially in randomized clinical trials. Not to mention human ethics. In this sense, I feel like Duflo, strangely enough, underestimates the significance of her work, as when she defends her methodology by pointing to its versatile applications: "I once sat through a presentation where randomized trials had been used to choose the best packaging for yogurt." Did I miss the point, or did she? I see development interventions as more like medical therapies than like the packaging of Yoplait.

Also, as a teacher and scholar from the so-called softer side of the sciences - anthropology - I maintain that not everything actually can be learned from randomized trials. It is only one method among others, some of which might be themselves more effective and efficient for learning and understanding what we seek to know. The New Yorker quotes Angus Deaton, who critiques Duflo's work on the ground that (1) "experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority" and (2) "even if your data are perfect, how can you generalize from the information? Does the policy that works in India work in Brazil?" Spoken like someone who might appreciate a bit of anthropology and ethnography.

Waste Not

How did I miss this?! OK, it probably has something to do with the fact that we live just beyond a day trip's drive to the MoMA, but I am sad that I missed this exhibit from last year - Beijing-based artist Song Dong's installation, titled "Waste Not." Here is a description from the MoMA's Web site:

A collaboration first conceived of with the artist's mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over fifty years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not," was a prerequisite for survival. The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.

Interestingly, I just read about "Waste Not" in an article about hoarding in the University of Michigan's alumni magazine.

LSA Magazine reports: "Cheap overseas labor and materials mean that consumer goods are inexpensive, and people are spending more on things." Hoarding looks like hoarding looks like horading, I guess, wherever you go, but I cannot help wondering whether or not it means the same at the point of production (in China) and at the point of consumption (in the U.S.)

On a side note, LSA Magazine also noted: "Recently southeast Washtenaw County in Michigan created a hoarding task force because so many evictions are hoarding-related."

Ceremony

Two points that I wish to make about ceremony:

Do not pooh-pooh the importance of ceremony. On Saturday, I participated in commencement exercises, a.k.a. graduation, a.k.a. the walk. I have to say, participating in such a ritual makes me appreciate it all the more. There are too few occasions (I think) in our modern American lives where we engage directly and overtly in symbols. The contemporary criticism made of ritual being so much hocus pocus - so what? Does it truly make us more clear eyed and less mystified not to engage in ritual? Or based on what I observe in college students, it seems to me that they know even less about symbols, even when they are being enacted (even preyed) upon by symbolism. Looking to classic ethnographies, I suggest that the Trobrianders and the Nuer, with all their rituals and symbols, seem to have been more aware of and articulate about their realities.

Grown-ups need to start acting and dressing like grown-ups. There am I, in my archaic robes. It would not do simply to "dress up": All aspects of the ceremony, including the robes, call attention to the rituals and symbols. That is the point of commencement exercises. So, what is with the parents and siblings and other relatives or friends of graduates attending the ceremony in baggy jeans or shorts (even cut-offs) and XXXL t-shirts with questionable language printed on them - and blowing those annoying air horns? Why not bring in the Number One foam fingers, too? Certainly graduation is an occasion for celebration, but is the Super Bowl the only model that we have for a larger, community-based observation? Apparently, it is.

I also wish to add that the families of color - the phenotypically black, Latino, or Asian-looking families - looked notably good: Fathers in suits and ties with polished shoes, brothers showered and shaved and wearing pressed shirts and slacks, mothers and sisters in flowered dresses and high heels. To be fair, most of the families, white and otherwise, seemed to be dressed for the occasion, but it was striking to me which families were not. Half-joking, I said to StraightMan: "See, this is why your race is on its way down and out in America." To which StraightMan responded that in fact, being able to appear in such a slovenly manner at commencement exercises is a sign that white privilege is as strong as ever.

StraightMan also wonders whether or not the lack of ceremony and knowing how to act and dress for formal occasions might not be linked to church-going or not-going. Church was, and is, one of the domains of everyday life in which Americans engaged in rituals and symbols and ceremony. The Super Bowl, it seems, cannot fill the void on its own.

On a not entirely related, but also not entirely unrelated point:

The last time that I visited my parents, I came home with a box of books saved from my childhood, including Johanna Spyri's Heidi, which I remember finding just fascinating. Like other books that I loved from my childhood - the Little House books, Little Women, and so on - I always became quite interested in the houses and the preparation of food. In Heidi, I especially found fascinating the descriptions of goat's milk and golden toasted cheese, bread, and sausage.

This time around, reading aloud to Beanie in the evenings, I became struck with how much God there is in the story. I am teaching Beanie that many, even most, other people in the world believe in God, and that this is an important belief for them that she does not need to share, but that she wants to understand and respect, in part because because many people whom she loves, like her grandparents, go to church.

I am starting to think also that it is important for Beanie to learn "about" God because without understanding what and why and how people believe, Beanie might not be able to develop fully a connection and a compassion for other people - for whom God is important - also to appreciate what it means to be awed and humbled and inspired. Which, a non-believer I am, I feel that I have glimpsed in other people's ideas and practices of faith.

Rituals, symbols, ceremony. Not to be pooh-poohed.

Paper crafts

Last night, gathered together with friends for book group. The book this time: Adrienne Martini's Sweater Quest, to which I hope we gave sufficient praise. The hostess with the mostess prepared for us a trifle - the actual dessert - and a chocolate decadence. Naturally, I had a slice of each.

Toward the end of the evening, I remarked on why I thought I had not learned sewing, knitting, crocheting, quilting, or any of the crafts that she enjoys. Hanji, or Korean paper crafts, being the current one, and it is the one that appeals to me, personally, the most. It might be that I am old enough now, or that Beanie is interested also, or that it is paper, and paper is itself a material that I especially appreciate and respect and love. The photograph above is an example of the beautiful work of her hand.

It is in part temperament - my mother and I both always have been rather impatient with each other - but I think importantly it also is that crafts have been moments of discovery and invention that are entirely her own. Two things that I feel have defined my mother for me: (1) She had been a MD, but stopped practicing, more or less, after my younger sister, the third of three, was born, and (2) She has whatever it required to become a MD despite not having had much means and not having been born the eldest brother in a Korean family.

A third thing is that by her own admission she has not read a word I have written since about middle school. Ironic, is it not, considering that I have been an aspiring writer of poetry and fiction, a newspaper reporter, and now an academic anthropologist? Or it might be that I have chosen my particular crafts not only for the moments of discovery and invention that I find in them, but also that they can be entirely my own. (I am not nearing 40, but still 14.)

Being a mother now makes me consider the various things we pass down - even pass down without passing it down, in the case of my mother's crafts and my own. I believe that in a number of respects, I am different as a mother than my own had been - I am not saying better or worse, but the boundaries and opportunities of my life look different from hers. Of course, we each have had a hand in shaping each other's boundaries and opportunities. The possibilities remain for remaking them, too.

As with paper.

My tenure kitchen

Hard to believe: I just finished my 4th year of teaching at what on this blog I will call East Central State University College. I agree it is ridiculous that all of these words can be strung together to form the name of an institution.

So, I am supposed to start thinking about putting together my tenure file.

Allow me to preface what I am about to say about tenure: I am not sure how I feel about tenure in general b/c I get that there are arguments for it pro and con, and this is now how they do it in the UK, and so on. For example, in terms of so-called job security, the idea of a 5-year contract, with possibility of renewal, sounds reasonable to me, too. However, tenure means "more" than job security. So, as far as that goes, I want tenure, too, as a sign of a positive appraisal resulting from the process of peer review.

Here is what I am about to say about tenure: I wish that there were more "perspective" on tenure. One of StraightMan's friends from graduate school remarked that tenure is proof of ability to self-exploit. Funny how many tenured and tenure-track professors do not find this, well, hilarious, as StraightMan and I do, sitting at our adjacent desks, preparing classes, then glancing and muttering at each other, "Self-exploiter."

What happened to irony: The kind that is so not what our high school English teachers meant, but that having come of age during Reagan and Bush I apparently cultivated. Or what happened to humility and the ability to see, like Straight Man, that "promotion in an institution like West Central Pennsylvania University was a little bit like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest. Certainly such success did not reflect greater worth on the open academic market. To move to a better college, we'd have to give up something - tenure or rank or salary, or some combination of the three" (27).

In other words, I do not want to make too small or too big a deal about tenure.

It might be b/c I am turning 40 this year, therefore feeling a bit more reflective than usual even, but this bit from Richard Russo also makes sense to me: "I sometimes tell myself that I might have found another book in me if I'd been in a different, more demanding environment, one with better students, a shared sense of artistic urgency, the proper reverence for the life of the mind. But then I remember Occam's Razor, which strongly suggests that I am a one-book author. Had I been more, I'd be more" (27). Which I quote not to be self-pitying or self-deprecating but b/c I think stating things so unpityingly and undeprecatingly, in fact, helps me to keep trying in any case. I think that it is necessary to recognize that research universities do not just hire researchers, but that they produce them. Similarly, teaching colleges produce teachers. Tenure, then, is academia / higher ed's brand of quality control. It ensures that the research universities produce researchers and the teaching colleges produce teachers, to more or less their specification.

BTW, I find Occam's Razor, how shall I say, a bit ethnocentric. Whose version of simple? What is so simple about your version or mine in the first place?

Which brings me to my intended topic: I hope I get tenure. When I do, I want a kitchen!

At first, I had been browsing magazines and books and Web sites like The Not-So-Big House, but I kept finding ideas and inspiration for not-so-small kitchens. Why does everyone think they need an island?

Then I stumbled upon Apartment Therapy and their Small, Cool Kitchens Contest.

I esp. like the kitchen with the old file cabinets in the International division.

Whatever my tenure kitchen looks like, it will not have an island.

Bubbie's Birthday!

Today, our young man turns 3 years old!

Above, an image of him at 7 months, in Ecuador.