379 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2015
    1. we no longer talk of the body in the city but of the ‘city in the body’

      the city became embedded in the body. what the city carries has integrated into the body, resulting in the body represents the city, instead of a city represents the bodies as a whole.

    2. Urban infrastructures are not only material manifestations of political power but theyare also systems of representation that lend urban space its cultural meaning.

      Relating this to Brian Larkin's "The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure." Infrastructures expose forms of political rationality that emphasizes technological projects. They constitute of the architecture for circulation, providing the undergirding of modern societies, and they create the surrounding environment of everyday life, which becomes parts of the cultures in the societies.

    3. A cyborg is a hybrid creature, composed of organism and machine.

      This reminds me of the movie Repo Men, when people are sick or injured and need transplants to survive they lose natural body parts and gain mechanical ones. Thus, characters in this movie are hybrid creatures. Image Description Image Description Image Description

    4. In dreams, after all, it is fear that creates our monsters rather than monstersthat create our fear.

      mind blown.

    5. I have sought in particularto develop a relational and materially grounded reading of the cyborg as an intrinsicdimension to the co-evolution of social and technological systems.

      Is this to say our process of evolution is inevitably moving towards human/robot hybrids?

    6. A simultaneous transformation in modes of human interaction with waterand social attitudes towards the body found its logical endpoint in the modern bathroom:a private space that marks a clear manifestation of indirect social control of the type

      Interesting example of how society interacts with its built environment and how they influence it.

    7. The latest wave of digitalarchitecture conceives of self-organizing robotic assemblages within the modernhome, for example, which will blur the distinction between architecture and furnitureto create new kinds of interactive and ergonomic spaces

      I'm not quite sure how architecture and furniture will become similar... are chairs going to be coming out of walls?

    8. the cyborg metaphor has been deployed tochallenge disembodied, dualistic, masculinist and teleological bodies of knowledge. Ithas infused science and technology studies with feminist epistemological strategies

      This is an important quote because yes, the cyborg metaphor is prominent in the discussion of the disembodied, dualistic, patriarchal understandings, and with the science and technology ways of rational thinking, it entangles itself with femist ways of theorizing knowledge - justified belief from opinion. But I don't know much about this, probably should ask professor Switzer in my Eco-philosophy class.

    9. The emphasis of the cyborg on the material interface between the body and the cityis perhaps most strikingly manifested in the physical infrastructure that links the humanbody to vast technological networks

      This quote stands out to me because it highlights the connection between the human body and the city. Humans have created infrastructure and use said infrastructure for technological networks.

    10. even if an interconnected skein of nanotechnology were toextend into all aspects of everyday life

      recent research has proven that personal use technology (internet, smartphones, gaming systems) have decreased the skills of interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence (mostly of the millennials generation)... should we be pushing for technology to be involved in all aspects of everyday life?

    11. The blurring of boundaries between the body and the city raises complexities in relationto our understanding of the human subject and the changing characteristics of humanagency.

      Maybe this is to say we shouldn't be blurring the lines of the boundaries so much then? Sounds a bit like playing with fire..

    12. the body-technology nexus that underpins the contemporary city

      Kind of a culmination of what we have been discussing this semester, it seems. - That our technology and infrastructure and how it relates to us and our bodies is the foundation of the conflict as well as the harmony we experience with our built environment.

    13. dings of technology we can discern an emphasison the cyborg as a means of becoming ‘post human’ in order to liberate the human bodyfrom the illusory boundaries of the autonomous self.

      The fact that life is not forever seems to give people a sense of care in what they do, because of the effects that it may have on their life. But with those boundaries gone, how far will we go, and could we still be considered human?

    14. fertilization, gene sequencing, advanced prosthetics and other sophisticated medicaltechnologies

      The above are mostly used in ways to maintain a sense of normalcy in our lives - to recreate nature, or how we perceive what nature would do. But, at what point does this transition into something as extreme as biological warfare- technology recreating something biological again, but is the intention the only thing that separates this?

    15. interface between technology and the body.

      Our bodies interact with technology all the time, where is the limit for when it becomes invasive/threatening?

    16. The appearance of the cyborg has engendered a newwaveof fear and trepidation towards the invasion of the body by strange technologiesthat threaten to eliminate or overwhelm the human subject

      It sounds like we're creating our own aliens and then essentially putting them inside of a subject/form that we recognize and are quite familiar with so our initial response to the subject will be favourable.. but we're being tricked.. overpowered.. Has anyone read The Host by Stephanie Meyer? Similar concept...

    17. self-acting

      We're essentially creating things on purpose that are going to have the ability to make their own decisions, possibly be smarter than us, and also have a chance of malfunctioning... Why?

    18. a sophisticated creation thatseems to simultaneously extend but also threaten our understanding of what it means tobe human.

      So if it threatens our understanding of what it means to be human.. is that beneficial to our ongoing research of essentially what makes us humans by constantly pushing our understanding to be deeper? or is harmful and uprooting of the interpersonal/cultural norms we've established?

    19. She referred to the high-rise as if it were some kind of huge animate presence, brooding overthem and keeping a magisterial eye on the events taking place. There was something in thisfeeling — the elevators pumping up and down the long shafts resembled pistons in the chamberof a heart. The residents moving along the corridors were the cells in a network of arteries,the lights in their apartments the neurones of a brain (J.G. Ballard, 1975: 40).

      This description gives me the creeps.. Makes me think of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" for some reason

  2. cms.whittier.edu cms.whittier.edu
    1. taken for granted fact of Horner’s built environment,

      Taking the built environment for granted, something many people do without a second thought until a shift in the built environment causes an upset.

    2. For them, attachments to abundant heat are indeliblyingrained across their skins, tastes and perceptions

      Do you think it's possible for them to re-adapt to lower temperatures and acquire a new set of preferences for different climate characteristics?

    3. ‘quality of life’

      (QOL)- general well being of individuals and societies. QOL has a wide range of contexts including fields of international development, healthcare, politics, and employment (Google/Wikipedia)

    4. Social service workers repeatedly reminded residents that it did not ‘make sense’to be cold when thermostats stood at recommended settings (69–72F [20.5–22.2C])

      That's so interesting. The residents had become entirely habituated and adapted to a much hotter temperature that they actually felt cold at a standard indoor room temperature.. Sounds like people from Southern California (kidding.. or am I?)

    5. They suggested that the CHA’s heat infra-structures conjoined wastefulness and neglect in ways that encouraged tenants’attachments to heat and, with respect to heat consumption, placed them perma-nently beyond practices of self-sufficiency

      I completely agree with this statement. They were unable to control levels of heat within their homes so when it consistently stayed too hot, they opened windows to let in cold air... hello.. That's like having your sprinklers on for your yard when it's pouring rain outside.. and there's a drought.

    6. Go out and see the birds along the building, singing, because, [therewas] no snow! Everybody be standing over the pipes, talking because it’s warm,standing out all winter long.’

      I visit my family in Chicago every winter.. I can assure you all it's nothing like this anymore. It's cold outside. Whether there is snow or not (due to storm variations every year) it's cold.. very cold.

    7. An inquiry into the senses directs us beyondthe faculties of a subject to the transfers, exchanges and attachments that hinge abody to its environment’

      Are these attachments made by adaptation to what's initially provided? or are they being developed as the subject is creating their built environment?

    8. As an idea, it also circulated within national and local concerns regarding municipaland federal obligations toward low-income citizens.

      Citizens or the federal government felt like more needed to be done? I would appreciate clarification on this point.

    9. intense heat and its periodic absenc

      Again, show two contrasting points. There either is 'project heat' (intense heating) or there is nothing. There is a gray area where someone can buy heat but they are limited on how much they can use. All or nothing concept?! Here the author is not truly highlighting on that gray area.

    10. modes of social and political inclusion

      Can we talk about this in class?

    11. I learned how makeshift connector hoses could carrygas from a neighbor’s source to one’s oven and how running extension cords froma neighbor’s home or tripping their current could power portable heaters.

      Like Anand's discussion and description of the water in Premnagar.

    12. Transitioning Horner residents’ nostalgia for project heat went beyond personalyearnings for the sensory certainty it had provided, to anxieties about how its losscomplicated kin relationships

      The creation of this infrastructure facilitated the building of relationships, and when the people were displaced, so were those relationships. It shows just how much of an impact the built environment has on us and who we relate to.

    13. personal tastes and the collective benefits

      This seems like a nearly impossible distinction for a government to make on the peoples' behalf. Which goes into the infrastructure of government and whether or not it is facilitating good change, or too bureaucratic to facilitate anything at all.

    14. infrastructural breakdownsas further evidence of the careless planning and mismanagement that plagued thehousing projects

      Pruitt and Igoe, right? this mismanagement of already under served populations,

    15. changing urban built environment shapes a new ethics of social care

      This seems like an echo of the Anand piece. Where the built environment, more that just physically, puts people in "their place" in society.

    16. approaching welfare reform as a kind of ‘sensory politics’ allows us to interrogatethe emerging conditions of formal political recognition available to transitioningHorner residents at a moment when their long-standing representational bodies(e.g. tenant councils) face obsolescence.

      In a time of transition these residents do not have adequate representation.

    17. obsolescence

      Out of date, no longer in use

    1. Relates to Harvey's The Right to the City. The governments lack of recognizing this city as a city having rights.

    2. "Part of the solution or your part of the problem" kind of article.

    3. hydraulic citizenshi

      Abjection is a necessity in order for the production of hydraulic citizenship to occur.

    4. Ethnography.

  3. Nov 2015
    1. andscapes and built environments canbecome repositories for meanings, identifications and bodily orientations salientwithin a particular group

      Everyone uses different environments differently. So different built environments and infrastructures can have different meanings identifications to different people. It just depends on the individual person.

    2. social care that treated sensory well-beingquaampleheat as part of obligations to its charges’ ‘comfort’ and ‘happiness’

      At this point heat was not for ones own survival. It was a residents privilege to have heat. Heat was a 'comfort' and it was for their own 'happiness'.

    3. The only thing Icansay that Idomiss is the heat

      Now that the heat is gone, that when the residents start to notice it. When intensely given something, people take advantage and almost forget they are even given a gift (the gift of heating in this case).

    4. two built environments – the gradually demolished architecture of theKeynesian welfare state and the gradually emerging architecture of a post-Keynesian urban communitarianism

      Symbolical Significance- two contrasting ideas standing together. Here the author is showing how a beat down and a new built environment are standing together, next to each other. This can be shown among people as well. People of higher status should be with people of lower class.

    5. nvestigated how a rapidlychanging urban built environment shapes a new ethics of social care as theAmerican welfare state itself undergoes substantial restructuring

      Rapid changing urban built environment looks to be shaping "a new citizen". A citizen without full access to heat. Now they need to pay for their heat and on top of that they are limited to how much heat they can use.

    6. As a condition of lease compliance, a transitioning Hornerresident must now assume financial and physical control of her domestic utilities,including her heating.

      These residents are being forced to use their utilities such as heating in order to live in these 'new communities'? How is being forced to using heating giving the resident any sort of control (like it says in this quote) of how they want to or don't want to use their heating.

    1. In Jakarta, for example, largechunks of the urban core were cleared of itspoorer residents, replaced with new commer-cial and residential buildings that now, after adecade or so, are being deemed obsolete orstructurally deficient even when they wereimplanted as an instrument of completionor permanence.

      Trends? Realization of how they got rid of the poorer residents?

    2. Such self-management oftenworks well, but it is also contingent uponthe costs and complexities of spare parts andrepairs, as well as the underlying economiccohesion of the neighborhood—in terms ofits ability to hold on to specific values anduses of land and the demographic stabilityof its inhabitants.

      All pieces of the puzzle must come together in order for infrastructure to remain stable. If someone does not have the right tools or access to information, they are helpless to sustain the power of the infrastructure.

    3. Curated social waste dumps and increasesin involuntary infrastructural inequality runrampant, as demonstrated in Chelcea andPulay’s depiction on Bucharest

      What is social waste?

    4. Whetherthis is a matter of intended deceit or an ingen-uous miscalculation as to how infrastructurewill actually be used and the costs entailedto keep it going, those responsible for itscare often run to keep up or simply disappearfrom view.

      So infrastructure is seemingly a negative thing here? Or is the authour pointing out that infrastructure can be abused by power?

    5. Normative understandings of infra-structure usually are organized around theways in which materiality is a platformupon which social differences are created,recognized and sustained

      Materiality causes differentiation in social classes.. the want of materialistic objects and those who have the ability (money) to get them will be higher. Can money buy happiness?

    6. However, the labor-intensive demands ofputting bread on the table also means thatpeople do not have the time or energy topay a great deal of attention to all of those

      People go through life with a focus on making money for survival, which often seems to result in tunnel vision. At the end of the day many people do not have the time or energy to work on building relationships with surrounding individuals. From a human behavior standpoint, this is a shame because connections and relationships are incredibly significant to our health and success.

    7. Beingsurrounded from all sides, and with suchthick textures of surveillance and calculation

      This feels like the society we live in as a whole. Where we might be pinned down based on our social classes, but also our own social infrastructure that we develop and how that then shapes us as we feel we shaped it.

    8. Here, residents are constantlyreminded that the place they inhabit wasnever intended for them in the first place

      Constant feeling of displacement right? Where do they belong? Also, what then is their impact on the built environment, is it really theirs?

    9. Maringanti and Jonnalagadda indicate thatas the mechanics of everyday residencebecome more individuated and privatized,thus making local political mobilizationsmore difficult, the intermeshing of practicesand perspectives, which relies both on soli-darity and difference, is disentangled. Thecomplex balance then of watching andleaving alone, of acknowledging being wit-nessed but also ignored is disrupted andthen vulnerable to intensifying feelings thatcertain people are expendable, and that theenactments of daily intimacies, of theprocess of being a person, depend on gettingrid of others, expelling them from proximity,further complicating the process of demon-strating mutual care.

      Can we break this down further in class, please?

    10. States are renowned for pro-viding a basic facility, such as a communitytoilet, water well or community center.However, their maintenance and repairsbecome the responsibility of the local neigh-borhood.

      We saw this in pruitt&igoe right?

    11. he subway offers proof of the relativesafety of the overall urban environment,

      comfortably uncomfortable?

    12. he decimationof public housing in Chicago became ameans of ‘rounding up’ black life into neigh-borhoods themselves increasingly depletedby scam mortgages.

      How infrastructure relates to race. Brings Harvey's, The Right to the City to mind with public housing serving as a way to segregate neighborhoods.

    13. the urban environment as a world existingsimultaneously with and without us

      Do we ever look at it this way? People find so much identity in their environment and then their environment gets claimed or labeled because of their existence. I wonder if we ever fully separate ourselves and acknowledge its existence without us being a part of it. I kind of feel like this is an example of the question about if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it actually fall?

    14. ensconce

      love this word! ensconced: establish or settle (someone) in a comfortable, safe, or secret place.

    15. choreographyof performances

      Subway rhythm?

    16. However, force also can exceed the boundsplaced on it. I

      Seems like a look back at Harvey, human force reacting to and adjusting the bounds of thee built environment.

    17. new terrain of infrastructure dothey seem to point to

      interesting choice of words here. The built environment as its own terrain, on the global terrain, based off of elements of social terrain. Cute.

    18. the inabilities of infrastructure to be anything‘for sure’

      Infrastructure serves different purposes for different people.

      Image Description

    19. alls seeminglywere constituted for inscriptions of allkinds, as they themselves inscribed theirway into marking off a sense of here vs.there, of yours vs. mine.

      Walls can mark differences in location- your room versus my room- and can also exist solely to be broken down. Walls can be broken down in various respects- reaching a new height academically, athletically, socially, etc. Looking at the in between by analyzing different elements of the same system of infrastructure.

    20. generating virtuous recursive loops

      recursive.. repetition.. recurrence.. rhythm

    21. Thus,any of these occurrences can ramify acrosseach other, affecting and being affected inways that exceed whatever infrastructure isavailable

      Is this to say we need even more structure than what is already in place? Or will the things being contained eventually escape from that rule also?

    1. some common urban odours detected in contemporary smellscapes

      because every culture could interpret the same smell differently, right? it would need to be very specific in it's organization .

    2. enhance their polysensoriality of the city

      a growing attraction? it seems like those amusement parks with the garden rooms that you walk into and feel so fresh after. People travel all over to visit nice smelling gardens. Is this to encourage tourism as wll in these cities?

    3. smell was something that we scarcely, if ever, thought about.

      That seems like it might not always be true, because we definitely don't see houses going up right next to landfills. ??

    4. whether smell truly is of less meaning and use in society today,

      Does it? because we are smelling all the time, more than we talk, or even see, except when we are sick.

    5. a less beautiful and a less ugly place without a sense of smell

      Couldn't this be true of any sense? I'm sure it would offer you greater indulgence in the other 4 if you lost 1, but is this one special in some way comparatively?

    6. sense of smell

      despite it being such a big part of our awareness, and so important to our well-being.

    7. The smell environments of towns and cities are incredibly important ar combine with other sensory information to impact directly on peoplt everyday experiences of urban life and their perceptions of different plac(

      I relate this to walking into a house at Christmas time and there being fresh baked cookies coming out of the oven. The combination of that and the decorations really sets the holiday spirit into everyone who feels that.

    1. Studies of infrastructure tend toprivilege the technological even if they qualify it by defining urban spaces as hybrid systems ofhumans and machines bundled together through infrastructural networks.
    2. hydrauliccitizenship, a form of belonging to the city enabled by social and material claims made to the city’swater infrastructure”

      it is sooo sad to think that in the less developed countries, some means of resources such as water in this case can put its own citizens into categories that depending on their status or how well-networked they are in reaching the resources

    3. ontology

      Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

    4. Yet he also reports that many of those evictedsupported the new settlement and regarded it with a sense of pride, even though they themselvesrepresent exactly the sort of disorder that the development was designed to overcome. “Yes, we’llbe the victims,” one fisherman says, “but still it will be beautiful” (p. 278)

      how is this possible?!

    5. Many infrastructural projects are copies, funded and constructed so that cities or nations cantake part in a contemporaneous modernity by repeating infrastructural projects from elsewhereto participate in a common visual and conceptual paradigm of what it means to be modern

      repetition of rhythms

    6. A road’s technicalfunction is to transport vehicles from one place to another, promoting movement and realizing theenlightenment goal of society and economy as a space of unimpeded circulation.
    7. they are objects that create the grounds on which other objects operate, and when they do sothey operate as systems

      circles. infrastructure creates and facilitates the flow of rhythms

    8. Infrastructures are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow fortheir exchange over space.
    9. In the case of infrastructures, the poetic mode means that form is loosened from technicalfunction.
    10. Studies of infrastructure tend toprivilege the technological even if they qualify it by defining urban spaces as hybrid systems ofhumans and machines bundled together through infrastructural networks. Yet one of the mostdynamic aspects of recent anthropological research on infrastructure is the sheer diversity of waysto conceive of and analyze infrastructures that cumulatively point to the productive instability ofthe basic unit of research.
    11. Poetics is thus a rearranging of the hierarchy of what signification within thespeech event is dominant at any moment. Discourse operates on many levels simultaneously, butspeech acts release differing meanings in their poetic function than they do in their referential oremotive functions.

      The infrastructure was built as a stable base for the continued flourishing and prestige of the community. Thus the hierarchy was established in order to keep the stability of infrastructures.

      Poetic Function Vs. Emotional Function...Couldn't poetic function use emotional function in order to get the message across? Just a thought.

    12. But infrastructures also exist as forms separate from their purely technical functioning, andthey need to be analyzed as concrete semiotic and aesthetic vehicles oriented to addressees

      Here Brian Larkin has described that infrastructures matter, having effects and affects far beyond their technical functioning, providing opportunities to constitute the political through different means. The infrastructure was then felt to be double-visioned. Political and Poetic.

    13. Focusing on the issue ofform, or the poetics of infrastructure, allows us to understand how the political can be constitutedthrough different means.

      What exactly does Larkin mean by "poetics of infrastructure"? Is there a specific definition or idea he was aiming for...or was he literally referring to the aesthetics of infrastructures and how we understand infrastructures?

    14. The meter, Von Schnitzler argues, delivered moral behavior aswell as water

      Similar to the Panopticon?

      The meter being a type of watch tower resulting in moral behavior as far as water usage.

    15. hydrauliccitizenship, a form of belonging to the city enabled by social and material claims made to the city’swater infrastructure”

      Similar to Harvey's, Right to the City?

    16. If this were true for modern society, it has multiplied in ourage of social media, in which control and value are indissolubly linked to the machine ensemblesthat comprise contemporary digital infrastructures.

      I have studied in my International Marketing course here how social media is a cultural institution in society and has an extremely powerful influence on societal structures regarding preferences, levels of acceptance of products/technology, and how consumers are influenced to use them.

    17. ascending an escalator in a department store was moving in a space entirely captured and formedby industrialism

      If it weren't for industrialism they would just be there in that space without the ability that these developments have given them. Holiday gift shopping would be such a different experience in downtown Chicago if elevators didn't exist.. I honestly think people would spend less because they wouldn't want to climb the stairs to additional stores to "just see what's in there".

    18. Pipes turn out to be documents.

      This just blew my mind. Reminds me of this scene in The Fault in Our Stars when Hazel is wearing a shirt with a pipe on it and tries to argue with someone that its not actually a pipe... it's only a drawing of a pipe..

    19. Mbembe points out that often thefunction of awarding infrastructural projects has far more to do with gaining access to governmentcontracts and rewarding patron-client networks than it has to do with their technical function.This is why roads disappear, factories are built but never operated, and bridges go to nowhere.

      Sounds like scheming for political gains.. This is easy to see in the work place or society when one befriends another or joins a certain group for political/hierarchal benefits rather than for the pure purpose of the action. African societies cannot be the only ones who follow these functional implementations of these infrastructural projects.

    20. Manhas,asitwere,becomea kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent.

      So... our inventions (technology) and how we implement them throughout society can make us god like? Makes me think of how we acquire different skill sets so that we can adapt to different tasks or work responsibilities (wearing different hats - if anyone has heard that metaphor)

    21. Infrastructures, for Collier, are amixture of political rationality, administrative techniques, and material systems, and his interest isnot in infrastructure per se but in what it tells us about practices of government. Soviet electricityprovision, through this lens, is analyzed for how it reveals a system of total planning in a commandeconomy rather than for what it tells us about the effects of electricity on users in Russia.

      It's never really about what is in front of us when it comes to politics.. there is always more to it.. His theory is a tool we could study to learn about a country/society's government by looking at the infrastructure they've created.

    22. Placing the system at the center of analysis decenters a focus on technology and offers a moresynthetic perspective, bringing into our conception of machines all sorts of nontechnological ele-ments.

      So it is not really about the technology, but more about how we are implementing the use of it throughout the different areas where these systems are constructed.

    23. Even the free flow of goods that constitutes a laissez-faire economyrests on an infrastructural base that organizes both market and society.

      So even in a hands free scenario, the market and society are still being structured by the government..? Does that really leave it to be hands free? The way the government decides to structure it surely must have an influence on how the turnout is

    24. Reminds me of social work's Systems Theory, which analyzes the various components of an individual's life and how they work together in a system in order to maintain homeostasis. Similarly, systems of infrastructure must work together for society to operate effectively.

    25. ontology

      Noun:

      studies the nature of existence or being as such.

    26. Our disciplinary bent is to examine the influence of a roadin this part of Peru (Harvey 2012) or that part of Niger (Masquelier 2002) rather than to analyzeroad building as a network.1

      Looking at the impact of various elements of infrastructure rather than the actual act of building these systems.

    27. n this article I assess what an analysisof infrastructures offers to anthropological analysis and what anthropology adds to the study ofinfrastructures.

      Objective for the article.

    28. t types of machines can be matched to types of societies;

      Our built environment, the things we place around us, elements of infrastructure, reflective of our culture and society.

    29. to produce a new sort of citizen

      technology with citizenship? person or thing?

    30. practices of routinization and extension

      rhythm?

    31. actor-network theory

      Actor–network theory (ANT) is an approach to social theory and research, originating in the field of science studies, which treats objects as part of social networks.

    32. Infrastructures are matter that enable the movement of other matter.

      Again, aren't they also used to prevent movement? And in terms of technology and how it is used to control us, to a certain extent, isn't it more forcing a certain movement on us?

    33. seeking to organize populations and territories throughtechnological domains t

      Is this similar to an interpretation of a panopticon? Where technology is the all seeing center?

    34. new intellectual directions in the disciplinehave begun to make the issue of infrastructures central.

      Kind of the foundation of this class, right?

    35. Infrastructures are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow fortheir exchange over space.

      But by it's actual definition, couldn't it also be a built network that blocks certain happenings instead of facilitating them? both good and bad?

    36. Infrastructures

      in·fra·struc·ture ˈinfrəˌstrək(t)SHər/ noun noun: infrastructure; plural noun: infrastructures

      the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.
      
  4. Oct 2015
  5. cms.whittier.edu cms.whittier.edu
    1. building your entiredaily routine and your work around the ferry schedule

      Schedules and daily life revolve around the ferry timetable.

    2. speeds, rhythms, and duration patternsplay an important role in performing a sense of place and time that is asunique as the flows themselve

      Speed, rhythms, and duration do not determine the way of life instead they play a role in behavior.

    3. Through duration time is ritualized. Bycultivating duration – that is, by doing things over and over – people createsignificant habits and rituals.

      Through duration of time and repeatedly doing things and creating habits are people also creating rhythms?

    4. Delays’ durations tell a lot aboutdifferent places’ sense of resilience too

      What do delay durations say about our society?

      Is this generational? Are your parents/ grandparents more or less patient regarding delays?

    5. Islands and coastal communities see their rhythms disrupted byweather, mechanical failures, special events, small incidents, and schedulechanges that wreak havoc with their spatial mobilities across the water,

      These disruptions are forces of arrhythmia within the ferry timetable.

    6. And yet ferries merely fore-ground individual ways of life; they do not determine them

      This reminds me of environmental determinism and possibilism. Ferries allow for a certain pace or pattern in life, but do not dictate the manner in which individuals fall into those patterns.

    7. Thetis Island’s famous ‘Oh-my-God-they’re-on-the-ferry pie’ quick recipe.

      Example of how deeply embedded ferries are in the island culture.

    8. Island time, like all place temporalities, is a relational entity. In otherwords, one can only make sense of it by understanding it in relation topertinent counterparts. Thus, the region’s pace of life is always slowerorfasterthan other places – and never just ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ in absolute terms

      The idea from Lefebvre that rhythms must have comparisons for comprehension.

    9. saving time as a goal in itselfbecomes less important when we attempt to understand the meanings oftime within the context of the region’s place temporality.

      Through the option of taking the highway or the ferry we can see that saving time during travel is not as important on island time since people appreciate the comparatively slow pace of life.

    10. ferries play the role oftime-keepers and time-makers

      Does this seem too restrictive? Ferries dictating when and where you can travel based on a timetable.

    11. you can never slow down too much. It’s impossible todisconnect. Right now I’ve got a ferry to catch from Swartz Bay to the GulfIslands, and Tony has a plane to catch at the airport. The idea of islandtime is all about trying, this is the keyword,trying, to slow down.

      Again the idea of being "in time" as a scale. People living with the island state of mind must still take outside influences into account, such as flight departures.

    12. ‘ok, you’ve been talking with thiscustomer for five minutes now, can you bag her shit and get us allgoing?’’ but I had to tell myself it was ok, there was no good reason tobe in a hurry.’

      Great example of how difficult it can be to slow down in life.

      Has anyone else experienced something like this? Did you recognize your thoughts as being impatient as this woman did?

    13. But those who are on island time tryto take the time to think, to connect with friends and neighbors, to smell theroses, to go out for a walk, or to take up time-consuming hobbies, likegardening.

      Hard for me to imagine this style of living as more than a weekend vacation since the need to be productive is greatly internalized. Always being on a fast track towards something whether it be academic, athletic, or personal I usually feel that I do not have time to "smell the roses."

    14. ‘But, no, really, island time is not just about being15 minutes late because the ferry is 15 minutes late’, Tony picks up again,‘it’s state of mind, it’s a way of living your life at a slower pace’.

      Is the idea of island time dialectic?

      In the sense that the ferry's pace shapes the place (people have excuses based on island time), and the place (way of living) shapes their slower pace of living.

    15. Despite her small size and old age theMill Baydoeswhat no other ferry in the BC Ferries system does: compete with a highway

      The selection of this ferry route allows for an analysis and understanding of island rhythms because people have a choice in taking the ferry or highway. Without an alternative route people on the islands would use the ferries out of necessity. As an alternative route, the Mill Bay makes it possible to examine transportation preferences.

    16. Moving‘in time’ and ‘out of time’ are opposite sides of the same coin, and theirmutual distinction is not meant to be a binary opposition

      An individual cannot be entirely "in time" or "out of time," it is more of a scale than binary opposites.

    17. Depending on schedules, dis-tance, lifestyle, and other variables, some people may travel as frequently asalmost every day or as infrequently as once, twice, or half a dozen times ayear, or even never.

      The rhythms of people's lives combined with the rhythm of boat arrivals and departures influences the ability to travel.

    18. In what ways do paces of movement shape places, and how do different placesshape their movements’ paces? The objective of this paper is to provide explor-atory answers to these questions by focusing on the mobility constellations offerry-dependent islands and coastal communities of Canada’s west coast. I

      Thesis

    1. What do surveys show contemporary urban dwellers are most concerned by in cities? Why crime, noisy neighbours, a whole raft of intrusions by unwelcome others. There is, in other words, a misanthropic thread that runs through the modern city, a distrust and avoidance of precisely the others that many writers feel we ought to be welcoming in a world increasingly premised on the mixing which the city first brought into existence

      expectations VS reality. Mixing the population was the intension of creating a city. However every individual has a different perspective and various levels of tolerance. But there is always an invisible pressure around us that expects us to think and behave in certain way, and live peacefully with one another, though that might not turn out in reality.

    2. , speed has produced a new landscape of anticipation

      We are very used to being fast-paced on everything and needed responses/results asap. Will this level of anticipation decrease by any chance? Do you think we will ever slow down?

    3. t this kindness has to be built into the spaces of cities. Thus cities have to be designed as if things mattered, as if they could be kind too. Cities would then become copy- ing machines in which a positive affective swirl confirmed its own presenc

      What are the kindness built into Whittier College? And is there anything we can do to bring more kindness to the college?

    4. the city produces solipsistic experiences which, in some sense, cut people off from each other and, presumably, from the natural condition of inter-relation they feel in smaller, rural communitie

      This is similar to what we talked about in the last class. Different kinds of social divisions created by the human-built environment

    5. 6 But friendship can also form a kind of moral community, whose power should not be underestimated in its reach- ing across.

      If you have a strong enough support system pushing for the same goals (and influenced and tied together by similar morals), you can do anything

    6. . Equally these are attempts to foster an expectation of civility which does not try to set its hopes too high

      Maybe society needs to focus on more short term goals that will be easier to assess on whether or not they are being reached.. It's important to set goals, but setting too high of goals can actually cause more discouragement than motivation

    7. I want to point to the way in which domesticity has been organized on military lines through the institution of the suburb and other normalizing spaces to enforce a particular notion of domestic normalcy which at the same time very often leads to everyday violence

      Okay, I get the idea behind the institution of the suburb and how government is "normalizing" spaces to push for a specific idea or vision of well-behaved and orderly citizens.. But how does this lead to everyday violence? Makes me think of "The Purge" movies... Creepy..?

    8. civilization is a key cause of antagonism: 'society, in trying to pro- tect us from what we want (ultimately, an end to internal tension), instills in subjectivity a profound malaise, while providing "an occasion for enmity"' (Lane 2004, 28).2

      civilization is a major cause of discomfort and provides situations that influences humans to be or feel hostile towards someone or something.. ? Really..

    9. This is surprising, not least because it could be argued that the foundation of social science itself rests on the response to various religious crises which prompted the production of increasingly secular and societal remedies for what had once been considered theological and metaphysical con- cerns: as Comte explained, theology's 'treatment of moral problems [is] exceedingly imperfect, given its inability . .. to deal with practical life' (cited in Lane 2004, 5). Hence, his 'system of positive polity'

      Is this saying theology is just talk? Just fluff essentially? That is does not allow for proper action in response to social or religious societies issues?

    10. . Human interactional intelligence is, so far as we know, predicated upon five qualities

      So this is basically the through process of analysis/division of how humans take in stimuli in the environment?

    11. More to the point, in situations of breakdown, whether epic or mundane, the humble mobile phone has extended the city's interactivity and adaptability in all kinds of ways and may well have been the most significant device to add to a city's overall resilience by adding an extra thread to the urban knot

      Technology is tying cities together, making them stronger, quicker to adapt to changes, and more able to respond to threats.

    12. the ubiquity of aggression is an inevitable by-product of living in cities.

      ubiquity - n.

      the state or capacity of being everywhere, especially at the same time

      aggression is everywhere and its just something that comes with living in a city?

    13. and disaster flooding in from the media that have generated a pervasive fear of catastrophe but also a more deep-seated sense of misanthropy which urban commentators have been loath to acknow- ledge, a sense of misanthropy too often treated as though it were a dirty secre

      Interesting thesis.. Media is known as one of the most influential institutions in society today... is he blaming media?

    14. t in an agonistic city, where agreement is thin on the ground, a little more kind- ness may be what we should hope for and what we can get, whereas love is a bridge too far

      The end of the article rose many questions for me. Was love really what previous urban societies were striving for? What is the states opinion? What if the state doesn't want love or kindness, but rather obedience and labor productivity?

    15. kindness has to be built into the spaces of cities

      Thrift argues that kindness is not merely urban mores, but also something to do with the built environment.

      Directly related to everything we have learned thus far. Don't you all think so?!

    16. I want to think of kindness as a social and aesthetic technology of belonging to a situation, rather than as an organic emotion

      Here, Thrift is arguing that instead of a politics in bare civility or love/altruism, what we need is a politics of kindness. However, he has an interesting definition for "kindness". He defines kindness as “a social and aesthetic technology of belonging to a situation” rather than an "organic emotion".

    17. they often sit very uncomfortably togethe

      This shows an interesting contrast that, where as, cities can be seen as bringing people, things, and the built environment closer together, they can also be seen as seperating the three since there may be some uncomfortability.

    18. not preclude a good deal of general misanthrop

      Affect is important to "human interactional intelligence" (139). Here empathy merely means being alive to the presence of affect. Not just being empathetic to positive affects, which is opposed to the negative affects (meaning that sociality does not mean "liking").

    19. Cities may have, as I will argue, a large reservoir of enmity but they also have a surplus of hope, an uncon- scious hunger for the future as well as the past.
    20. Western cities are continuously modulated by repair and maintenance in ways that are so familiar that we tend to overlook them

      This quote ties with the quote "it would be possible to argue that cities are constantly adding new circuits of adaptability" found on page 136, which suggests that cities are not as unstable as they may appear, since their cycles of maintenance and repair introduces a form of adaptability.

    21. solipsisti

      The theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.

      Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

    22. Children tend to learn sociality and sharing, at least in part, through intimidation, victimization, domination and sanctio

      Is this saying that children are intimidated and dominated into learning sociality and sharing? Or that children intimidate and dominate others into sharing with them?

    23. Because fear sells. There is a market in anxiety

      Examples of advertisements based on fear, intimidating people into taking care of their bodies.

      Image Description

      Image Description

    24. 'dromo- cracy

      The French philosopher and urbanist, Paul Virilio, coined a term “dromocracy”

      The relationship between power and speed. ‘Dromos’ come from the Greek word for race. ‘Dromocracy’ therefore is the power to rule by speed.

    25. 4 Again, the sight and sound of these services is a quintessential everyday urban experience.

      Is this dependent on geographic location? How might the sights and sounds of repair and maintenance services be different in other areas?

    26. Cassandra tendenc

      Cassandra tendency: occurs when valid warnings or concerns are dismissed or disbelieved.

      The term originates in Greek mythology. Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, the King of Troy. Struck by her beauty, Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy, but when Cassandra refused Apollo's romantic advances, he placed a curse ensuring that nobody would believe her warnings. Cassandra was left with the knowledge of future events, but could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.

    27. Cities are based in large part on activities of repair and maintenance, the systematic re-placement of place, and this ability is still there in times of trouble to be adapted to the new circumstance

      Related to Harvey's Right to the City, we refresh and adapt our environment to better fit our own changes as individuals and as a society.

    28. an object which has temporal extension into the futur

      the built environment as an extension of ourselves? is this confirming what we speak of in class about our environment reflecting us and therefore reflecting the time in which we exist?

    29. f enmit

      enmity = feelings of hatred, animosity

    30. advances in material civilization necessarily lead to moral progres

      If anything, doesn't this lead to us being more isolated in our day to day lives? And furthers the disparity between "1st" and "3rd" world nations?

    31. tropes

      metaphors

    32. misanthrop

      misanthropy = a hatred or mistrust of humankind

    1. Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia,”

      This relates to Harvey's The Right to the City. This shows how black families do not have any rights to their own city. Instead it is stripped away from there.

    2. “If I could take German property without sitting down with them for even a minute but go in with jeeps and machine guns,” said David Ben-Gurion, “I would do that.

      Why is it that humans tend to turn to violence to get what they want? Is this a primal instinct still influencing our interpersonal communications with others? Or is it something taught to us as we grow up and witness what is effective in our world? Is violence an effective way of getting what one wants?

    3. And this was just one of their losses.

      Ouch..

    4. Trayvon Martin

      Travyon Martin as in the recent police victim Travyon Martin?

    5. black people keep on making it, white people keep on taking it—a fact of nature.

      A fact of cultural nature? Culture is created by the society that shares a particular set of values, traditions, beliefs... People can change.. Are we capable of changing our culture?

    6. fit for maximum exploitation, capable of only minimal resistance.

      exploitation should be illegal...

    7. “Any contemplation of compensated emancipation must grapple with how several counties, and some states in the South, would react to finding themselves suddenly outnumbered by free black people.”

      It's easy to imagine the white men being outnumbered by the amount of enslaved african americans.. now let's think about the white men's fear if suddenly all those african americans were set free..

    8. And just as black families of all incomes remain handicapped by a lack of wealth, so too do they remain handicapped by their restricted choice of neighborhood.

      They can't be blamed for not doing better economically because they have such limited choices/opportunities.

    9. In 1930 its population was 112,000. Today it is 36,000. The halcyon talk of “interracial living” is dead. The neighborhood is 92 percent black. Its homicide rate is 45 per 100,000—triple the rate of the city as a whole. The infant-mortality rate is 14 per 1,000—more than twice the national average.

      These are some intense statistics.. It'd be interesting to compare them to other cities in the area..

    10. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

      These lenders think this is all a game... It sickens me that another human would knowingly exploit someone's inability to establish a legitimate position in the credit system.

    11. o that’s just one of my losses.”

      It amazes me that he so willingly accepts his unfair loss... Probably because he knew he would be hurt if he denied them his horse or caused an issue about it..

    12. “You can’t have this horse. We want it,”

      Just like that.. Knowing what kind of bond you can form with a horse, I'd be extremely upset if someone were to take one away that I'd had since I was a child just because they wanted it.

    13. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history

      Sooo in order to make amends for a wrong doing, for a reparation, we need to tell people to fix their own self-image?!

    14. sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans

      It is really crazy to think that people are categorized in different levels because of their races. And surely the sub-categories are made to create supremacy and a larger segregation by the already privileged people.

    15. It’s very hard to accept white supremacy as a structure erected by actual people, as a choice, as an interest, as opposed to a momentary bout of insanity.
    16. An unsegregated America might see poverty spread across the country, with no particular bias toward skin color

      How would you define "unsegregated"? And does skin color really affect one's wealth?

    17. He preferred to take his chances with war. He was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed.

      I find this rather interesting. Once he got "power", from the military, he was no longer bothered. Social status may be at play here?! Another interesting fact is that his background of low class no longer matters, its where he is at in his life right now which is part of the armed forces.

    18. Elegant Racism

      Is there even such a thing called "Elegant Racism"? Since when is racism good? I do not agree there is any way to "better" racism.

    19. And when civic engagement was not enough, when government failed, when private banks could no longer hold the line, Chicago turned to an old tool in the American repertoire—racial violence. “The pattern of terrorism is easily discernible,” concluded a Chicago civic group in the 1940s. “It is at the seams of the black ghetto in all directions.” On July 1 and 2 of 1946, a mob of thousands assembled in Chicago’s Park Manor neighborhood, hoping to eject a black doctor who’d recently moved in. The mob pelted the house with rocks and set the garage on fire. The doctor moved away

      This reminds me of a scene from the movie Remember the Titans when someone threw a brick through Coach Boone's window as an act of racial violence. After looking through an interview with the real coach, I found that this event did actually occur but instead of a brick thrown through the window of his home it was a toilet.

    20. “The two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black,” John C. Calhoun

      Do you agree with Calhoun? Why/why not?

      And what are the other social divisions exist in the American society?

    21. The vending of the black body and the sundering of the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America.

      The manipulation and extortion that took place, for example, in North Lawndale encouraged its own economy and profited many men who took place in this post slavery...slavery.

    22. useful members of the community.”

      this doesn't sit right with me. People can only be allowed to be part of a society if they are "useful"? And useful how? to perpetuate stereotypes and further participate in segregation?

    23. They were charging society with a crime against their community.

      Why do we so rarely learn about organized efforts of minorities fighting back against the inequality and unfairness that has been so completely thrown against them?

    24. lave sales were taxed and notarized

      Slave sales were more official than the North Lawndale real estate.

    25. Kids in North Lawndale need not be confused about their prospects: Cook County’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center sits directly adjacent to the neighborhood

      If you were in the position of those growing up in North Lawndale would the neighboring Juvenile Center motivate you to improve your life, or would you accept that your fate is already sealed based on where you are from?

    26. They have been taughtChristian civilization, and to speak the noble English language instead of some African gibberish. The account is square with the ex-slaves.”

      Teaching English repays for slavery?

    27. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.

      Poverty is concentrated among those with dark skin.

    28. conflagration

      Noun: A destructive fire, usually an extensive one

    29. n 1968, Clyde Ross and the Contract Buyers League were no longer simply seeking the protection of the law. They were seeking reparations

      Reparations:

      the making of amends for wrong or injury done: reparation for an injustice.

      compensation in money, material, labor, etc., payable by a defeated country to another country or to an individual for loss suffered during or as a result of war.

      restoration to good condition.

    30. Contract sellers became rich. North Lawndale became a ghetto

      Development of a ghetto.

    31. Local white children had a school bus. Clyde Ross did not, and thus lost the chance to better his education

      Opportunity often influences the paths we are able to follow. The novel, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell is a study of cultural anthropology that goes into depth regarding how opportunity impacts success.

      http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930

    32. “Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia,” the AP reported.

      Resembles the dispossession of the poor presented by Harvey in The Right to the City.

    1. "'overfarming' was a problem in the early 1930s"

    2. "The weakness of this argument is the permanence of an unwarranted urban shift compared to the flexibility which a judicious policy of land preservation would allow future generations."