Here isJames Boyle Response to Richard Espteins highly ideological and ill informed assesment of open source and here is some additional commentary from Grok Law

What an ‘exciting’ evening: I deliced my blogs of spam and looked up all the call numbers for the books and articles I need to put on reserve for the course on hacker ethics and politics I am teaching next quarter. So I have a little time to kill before crashing in bed (still not quite over this stomach turmoil that has hit my life this week) I will just ramble with some random stuff I wanted to blog this week.

So first off because blog is such an atrocious name, it repels. I am convinced that if blogs were not called blogs there would be way more bloggers in the “blog0Sphere” yet folks eventually get the itch, and get over their understandable name repulsion. You see more and more folks I thought would never have a blog, like espe and dilts now have them and I find them pretty darn pleasant to read. Dilts actually had a specialized blog to prepare for his exams which is pretty clever thing to do. I imagine that blogs will become pretty standard for teaching and I personally will use IRC for non-essential office hours type stuff (and as a great way to cut down on the administrative email which can be a nightmare).

So, speaking of the academy and academics…. It has been surprising how few established (ie tenured) professors have spoken out against the AAA’s actions in the face of the striking workers in Atlanta. I think the reasons for this are complex, but it seems to be part of it is just a general trend towards public silence in the academy. It is not like it is entirely silent it just seems like silence is the norm and then there are a few outspoken critics. I think if a few more of them took the plunge into the icy waters, I bet more would follow. And you know if these older tenured folks were writing blogs, they would for sure just spend like 15 minutes firing off an excellent letter.

Today one such letter popped into my inbox, written by Philip Bourgois Like much of his writing, it does not mince with words. Its simplicity is what grips:

Dear Anthropologists,

Please do not go to Atlanta for the sake of the workers locked out of the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco and for the sake of hotel service workers throughout the country. The Hilton Hotel in San Francisco has locked its workers out for asking for basic necessities that are common sense in the rest of the industrialized world and should be considered a basic human right: decent minimum wages and health benefits… (for full-time employees!) The conference in Atlanta is at a non-union Hilton Hotel. All sections of the American Anthropological Association should cancel their sessions in Atlanta. The Hilton Hotel and the Hilton Company will benefit financially and symbolically by having anthropologists attend their hotel in Atlanta.

By patronizing any Hilton Hotel while its workers are locked out in San Francisco (or anywhere else in the world or the country) we would be behaving exactly like United Fruit Company executives in Central America and multinational executives throughout the world who break the backs of unions by simply switching production to non-union plantations/sweatshops in neighboring countries when one of its plantations/sweatshops tries to unionize. That is unconscionably abusive and is much more important than any of our anthropology-meeting-related concerns. We should have the decency and humility to realize that whatever we have to say at our academic meetings can wait for another year or six months for the sake of hotel workers. Service workers have a chance of winning this fight for their rights because hotels, unlike plantations and sweatshops, have to stay put. The service workers union will lose if organizations like the AAA move around the country at the will of the Company to whichever city has the cheapest wage and most abusive working
conditions. This is not a complicated issue. It should be easy for anthropologists with a global perspective to understand the stakes.

Like it always does, the fall has taken grip of me. Its brilliant reds and oranges bring the blue sky to life, the dying greens becoming a precious frame instead of the dominant color. Fall seduces me like no other season does. It may be because it was the one season I never saw until I was 18. Whatever its magnetic force of attraction is, it puts me in the right state of being: contemplative yet highly alert; an inner happiness is marked by a side of saddness. It is a time where I feel perfectly justified in retreating, in burrowing deep into my thoughts and my work. I usually am most productive in the fall which may be sheer incorporated habit. Years and years of school will do that to ones thinking…

One of the the elements that I love most about fall is the persistence of life in the face of death or withdrawl. Before shedding thier leaves into a state of symbolic death, the trees are defiant, they explode into a briallance of reds, and oranges, as if to let the world know there is still plenty of life in there despite its upcoming state of hiberation.

Defiance. That is what signators of this petition written to the executive director of the AAA’s feel. Defiant, pissed, and let down. We all received a thoughtful email last week about the hotel strike and lockout in the Hilton, which was the location of our meeting. At the time, it seemed like the AAA as an organization was taking into serious ethical account the implications of supporting the hotel during the time of such a serious strike. They conducted a poll and even though the majority of respondents said they would either want to cancel or move to San Jose (where we recieved offers of financial help from the city), the moved the meetings to Atlanta in mid December and no less to another f*cking Hilton.

Wow, what a shocker. And as said by one class mates after the decision was made –> “The AAA rules, like Imperial Swine.” Any respect I had for the org is going to be hard to find. For a discipline that has been fraught by its colonial legacy and which has I think done a really amazing job at being reflective and critical about the implications of power and knowledge, the organizations representing the disciple has taken the path of least resistance, has reinscribed the conventional order of things, it has ignored the input from its members, and yet this is one of the worst elements, it does so claiming it has taken the input of its members into account though in fact they NEVER even offered (another Hilton in a different city) as one of their decision. In other words, they were entirely cowardly and shady.

Now, a group of folks (notably grad students on the job market) are left in an awful bind for those are the only members (aside from some members of the different sub associations who have to meet) who really have to go. I mean, the job market is so tiny to begin with, missing your first round interview can have serious implications for your future. Of course these are the poorest members and thus will suffer from the money lost from changing plane tix and losing out on hotel reservations.

What I find so sad is that the AAA’s and its members had a chance to make a statement, to be defiant, to explode into a firm support and make a difference, even if limited and temporary, that would have struck and stuck in the minds of the workers and hopefully the Hilton. As a group of professionals, while we won’t ever make the salaries of doctors or lawyers, our privilege is way beyond anything these hotels workers will ever face. A life under a minimum wage job in San Francisco is no easy life, and worse, these are folks who service largely the affluent. Yet, as an organization we were unwilling to make a stance of support of the workers and also worked “behind closed doors” with Hilton so that we 1) still have to meet in thier hotel 2) and are bound to them again in 2006. Either they used some amazing scare tactics, or the AAA’s are totally spineless. And who are they trying to please in this case? They knew many member would not cross the picket lines. Did they think that moving acorss the country so you don’t have to face the garbage was going to be ok for those who did not want to cross the line? I mean most people who did not want to cross the line, I would hope (and I believe) were doing it for the issues and not to avoid feeling lame by doing so.

Anyway, politics to me is a little like making some brilliance in the face of a bad situation. In the case of our lovely fall leaves, it is just the order of nature that leads to such stunning beauty. But people, by sacrificing and making contributions where they can, in the face of unjust practices, can also make themselves into defiant objects, brining some brilliance into a world otherwise marked by a lot of ugliness.

So so so so so. Days and day pass and I don’t write a word here though I have composed, in my head, about 10 blog entries. Perhaps one of the more interesting things to have developed is that the AAA are pondering canceling their annual meetings to be held in SF in November over a a nasty hotel lock out and strike among hotel workers like room cleaners and bar tenders.

It was great to see the AAA write us a long memo, laying out the complexity of the dilemma’s, which range from our ethical stance to the huge financial loss they may incur. The AAA asked for member votes or opinions (it was unclear what they were using the information for) and I imagine they will come to some decision based in the information (hold the meeting, cancel, move to San Jose or postpone). Among U of C anthropologists, this has generated a lot of conversation on mailing lists and tomorrow our dept is having a public disucssion about it which I look forward to.

Below I am providing two letters, quite different in tone and content over what should be done. One is by Terry Turner, a professor of indigenous Amazonian groups with a heavy Marxist bent, the second the statement from the Society of Medical Anthropology. Terry wrote his letter to Sidney Mintz, another famous old school Marxist anthropoligist who felt some sort of middle ground might be possible. Terry clearly thinks otherwise and I tend to agree with him which is why I was quite dissapointed by the SMA decision, especially since this stike is largely over health care (rates are projected to go from $10 per month to $129. Percantage wise that is about…. a buttload$###$$^% Further their recourse to postmodernism for justification makes me a little sick. It mask the clear difference between our privilege as a professional organization and the situations of workers. Further to claim postmodernism is to make sweeping genreralizations about living in a world where subjectivity is fragmented and everyone deals with all of lifes complexities through a networked medium. Like is so often the case, a postmodern trope leads to political copouts. If it does not breed extreme cynisim, it breeds some screwed up logic of fatalism. Oh wait that is the same thing… And it entirely justifies a politics of selfishness. Ok, I am treading on the terrain of moral righteousness, I am just peeved and tired right now. Anyway take a look!

Dear Sid,

Thanks for your letter on the SF Hotel situation. I can’t agree with
your assessment of the situation, or your ideas for action, for the
following reasons. First and foremost, crossing a picket line is crossing a
picket line, and is unacceptable. The Union is not interested in suspending
the picket for individuals in exchange for other gestures of
support–”support” in this situation means not crossing the line. Just
cancelling one’s personal room reservation at the Hilton and abstaining from
buying drinks and eats at the Hotel, while attending the meetings in the
public rooms of the Hotel anyway, is not a viable alternative. It would
avoid the issue that those rooms would only be available because enough
other AAA members did not cancel their reservations and thus crossed the
picket line in the full sense of defying the union’s appeal for a boycott of
the Hotel.Those abstainers who cross the picket line only to attend sessions
would be taking advantage of a resource made available as a result of the
conduct of those colleagues who refused to honor the strike. They would thus
make themselves accessories to that conduct.

For these reasons,the alternatives seem to me to reduce to 1)cancel
the meetings altogether or 2)San Jos

So here is a new article on the Walmart class action suit. Good stuff. I still get more comments on this entry and here is where you can get information about the suit

I love it when some seemingly arcane academic topic (like framing and association in language) directly bears on politics. George Lakoff, a linguist from Berkely has recently published a new book Don’t Think of an Elephant that captures, in very straighforward language, the extraordinary power of language and association to shape political affect and desire. Moreoever he links the difference between progressive/liberals and conservatives to the ways each group views family, family relations, and especially child rearing. Thus, the images and words conservatives use directly evoke and reinforce the ways in which conservatives tend to see the role of family, and by extension, nation. Apparently, according to his arguments, progressives have not been adept at transforming thier program into an evocative language of values and associations.

You can read an excerpt of the book A Man of His Words as well as a nice Editorial .

Siva Vaidhyanathan has written a short but interesting piece, an “apologia” of anarchism, titled We are all anarchist now. A professed liberal, he studies anarchism and says we should take them seriously. As he concluded:

So anarchists are not as dangerous as the police and newspapers would have you believe. And they are not as effective as they dream they are or hope to be. But they do matter.

Now, I have to say my interest has been piqued. He seems sympathetic to anarchists but he is makes sure to designate himself a liberal (just in case we would confuse him as an anarchist). I would like to know more about what he sees as the compelling aspects of anarchism and what he sees as the unrealistic and problematic parts. Maybe this is covered in Anarchist in the Library, which is why I just recalled it from the library…

I really appreciate a centralized site chock full of readable and searchable information on a topic. One such site, is the Bretton Woods Project, which I have only recently come across. I have really found it to be one of the best websites out there in terms of clarity, information, access, and useablity.

Before I forget, for those in Puerto Rico, Yari of YariDiaries has created a useful website pide que hay, a guide for how to get services and free stuff in Puerto Rico (food stamps, health insurance and grants). Nice..

A regular contributor to Indymedia Puerto Rico Carmelo Ruiz has written an excellent article, Puerto Rico’s Biotech Harvest detailing the distrurbing, entirely unmonitored experiments with GE foods going on in Puerto Rico. He asks, why PR?, and he provides with no frills, its answer.

But another reason for choosing Puerto Rico is its “good political climate.” Puerto Rico is not an independent country, nor is it a state of the American union. It is an “unincorporated territory.” Puerto Ricans are US citizens subject to US laws, yet they cannot vote in presidential elections and have no representation in Congress. There are no anti-biotech campaigns or protesters, not even the mildest criticism. If the American people are for the most part unaware of genetic engineering and food biotechnology issues, the people of Puerto Rico are blissfully in the dark.

This of course is no isolated case in PR or in the region. Since the turn of the last century, the Caribbean and Central America have been part of America’s Manifest Destiny, in particulary a convenient “backyard,’ a test bed for various social, medical, agricultural experiements, most of which never produced any benefits to local populations, only harm. Whether it is the very visible military take over of the region or the less visible but as harmful birth control experiments to test the first very high hormone pill on Puerto Rican women (who gave no consent to the experiments) the Caribbean has been America’s pet laboratory, indeed perfect because of Puerto Rico’s fundamentally ambigous political status…