New Keyword: Boundary

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term boundary is used to indicate the bounds or limits of anything material or immaterial; also the limit itself. A boundary is not limited to physical structures such as borders and fences that may divide private properties from public areas or to delineate territories such as state and nation boarders, but it also represents the limits of how we can interact, intermingle with each other and the way in which we categorize the world, such type of boundaries are known as symbolic boundaries. According to sociologist Michele Lamont, symbolic boundaries are the types of lines that individuals draw when they categorize people; they are ways in which people distinguish themselves from others and ways in which people group various elements in their environment. Concrete examples of these types of boundaries include categories such as sexuality, race, gender, and class. Currently, these types of symbolic boundaries are being continually stretched and expanded, reforming and reshaping our social world.


As mentioned above, there are physical boundaries which are visible to the naked eyes, such as walls and fences that may divide countries and states. Yet we must remember that even such physical structures are based upon arbitrary labeling of what a “boundary” is or where the boundary lies. For example, the “line” or “boundary” that divides California and Mexico is arbitrarily assigned. In order for the public to recognize or view boarders as more natural, actual lines, walls or fences are constructed to represent the boundaries. Yet, these boundaries are constantly contested as has been illustrated by unauthorized immigrations.

On a more theoretical level, individuals who choose to illegally migrate, crossing nation boundaries without state consent may view such land boundaries differently. As illegal immigrants generally are from poorer environments, nation boundaries act as a boarder that separates them from opportunity, wealth or even freedom. Through this light, the idea of boundaries, even the physical structures of it, becomes more complex and multifunctional. It acts both as a territorial divider and a barrier to some people.

Continuing on along the lines of symbolic boundaries, we can look on the issue of sexual boundaries. Today, views on sexuality are more visible, more audible, and more ambiguous and stretched out than ever before. This is signified by the recent establishment of gay marriage in California. The norm of heterosexuality is being contested by gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and bisexuals who are now “coming out of the closet” to fight to be accepted by the public. By extending the right of civil union to homosexuals, California leaders have shown that the boundary for sexuality has expanded and had become less rigid.

Moving along similar progressive lines, racial boundaries are also being contested and stretched and is signified through increasing interracial marriages and relationships. At one point in our history, people of different “race” were bounded from to engage in a romantic relationship. Today, we have come to a point where people freely date and fall in love with individuals of different skin color; race is no longer a boundary that separates people, at least not by law.

Another symbolic boundary which has significantly shifted is that of gender boundaries. Women can now compete with men at virtually equal levels for anything from the business world to sports; they are no longer domestically bounded. As gender differences are now being consolidated and blended, the boundary that separates men and women has become decentralized. Perhaps Hilary Clinton’s brave move to become a presidential candidate as a prime example of the shift of women’s role from the domestic realm into political, professional and various other areas which men have dominated.

As boundaries can be shifted left or right, it can also be moved back to its previous location. Boundaries, whether tangent and physical or invisible and symbolic, is a divider that is continuously changing, fluctuating back and forth. Our time may show the stretching and deconstruction of boundaries to break down oppression, but future generations may experience another shift in boundaries. I believe that we have all tried to identify and cross boundaries in one way or another through out this course. Whether it is the through the discussion on race, gender or Wall-e we have repeatedly attempted to define the boundary that divides right from wrong, appropriate from inappropriate, humor from offense or the point where something becomes oppressive or dangerous to a group. Thus, continue to ask what the limit is or what the threshold is and then set out to test your own boundaries.

The sky is the limit.

Lamont, Michele. Money, Morals and Manners: the Cuture of the French and American Upper Class. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London

help?!

I have been thinking about this final assignment for the past week and after going through various possible terms to write about such as "shit", "organic" and "kinship". I have decided upon the term "boundary". I chose this word based upon various class discussions which we have had. The looming question that we seem to have ended each class with has been -- what is the limit or what is the line or threshold, how far can we push things? Thus, I think that the term boundary is very relevant to what has developed in our class discussions and to our society at the moment. These societal issues which I am referring to are issues like marriage boundary (it being extended to homosexuals), class boundaries, race boundaries, gender boundaries, technology boundaries and so on. We normally see think of boundary as clear physical boarders that divides things. However, there are invisible boundaries that you can not see yet has shape our lives and produce consequences that are very apparent and to the eyes (i.e. poverty, way women and men dresses...).


Please let me know if this is a good idea and I am open to any suggestions as to how I can go about describing this key term.

judge judy, myspace and writing

Today’s class discussion about myspace reminds me of an episode of Judge Judy that I saw last year. In this particular episode, an elderly woman was suing her son’s friend for “slandering” her on his myspace blog. Apparently, the mother had done something that came out as b****y to the young friend, so he vented his anger on his blog in which he used various curse words to describe her. Her son read the blog entry and told his mother about it and she ended up suing the friend who posted the entry.

Aside from being tremendously ridiculous, this case was humorous as well, we can really try to sue anyone for anything these days! On a heavier note, the case really made me think of the boundaries of privacy. Can we really have privacy, especially in the vast network of internet? Sure, we can set our blogs and space pages on private but as long as we are linked to another person, friends can always expose our pages to outsiders. Perhaps this issue of privacy working online was one of my biggest concerns about the format of the class at the beginning. I am a pretty timid and quiet person and am honestly very self conscious and insecure about my writing, thus the idea of twenty plus other students reading my essays unnerved me. During my first couple entries I wrote and rewrote my entries four to five times, or until I got lazy, before posting it; I normally don’t even reread my papers, I rely on spell check and friends to help me do the needed revisions. However, the online blog entries forces me to self correct and revise, and I am beginning to enjoy this newly develop habit. Additionally, I have developed an appreciation for critiques from others.Another aspect of the course design is that we can use images to illustrate our written ideas and thoughts without going through the hassles of having to do presentations.

This class has forced me to become more comfortable with comparing my work to another student's work and thereby has taught me to look for alternative writing styles. I believe that this is a skill that will be very useful in the future. Furthermore, writing blogs and reading other people's blog has made me realize that my audience don't all think alike, thus pushing me to be more careful and aware of my audiences when expressing my opinions through my writing. I really enjoyed the Keyword book, it has contributed new meanings to words which I thought i knew through and through. Before this class I did not know how to start a blog, least of all maintain one, you can be assured that I have learned more than this in the past six weeks.

humor and pictures

Ashley’s post about her boyfriend, Jeff, caught my attention instantaneously for several reasons. One is that my friend’s mother had an aneurism yesterday and is currently on life-support so I am feeling uneasy about hospitals, and think that hospital scenes should be treated with seriousness. Of course, this is only a thought because my friend’s mother is in such a critical condition. At the same time, I also realize, as we discussed in class, that humor can be used to debunk stereotypes and discrimination, and to deal with tough times— but can humor also be used to deal with devastating and traumatic situations such as a mother’s death? In such as case, is it even appropriate to laugh or try to make people laugh as a “coping” method? I guess, I am throwing out the same question which many other class members developed during our class conversation which is, where is the line of “appropriateness” for humor drawn? Personally, I have a strong support for people such as David Chappelle, George Lopez and the other minorities who do use humor to show how ridiculous racialized stereotypes are and to deal with their oppression as discriminated minorities. However, I am uneasy with the idea of using humor to cope with the death of a loved one, especially a mother – would it really hurt to shed a tear or two for the woman who carried you for nine months?

Secondly, the image of Jeff with two thumbs up while hovering over an elderly man with tubes running in and out of him is very unnerving – it is almost as if he is celebrating the man’s near death condition. However, as Ashley’s post explains, the young man is merely showing his joy over the fact that the elderly gentleman has survived a dangerous surgery. I guess what this image really reminds me that even pictures can lie and that we should not judge books by their covers. But, can an image really lie? In a sense is an image not the most honest thing since it just ? They always say that a picture is worth thousand words, perhaps the meaning behind this clichés is that a picture has a thousand stories behind it, and each viewer can take the image of what they see and interpret it in their own way.

Boy or Girl?

For some people, the hardest part about this post assignment may have been trying to figure out what exactly they want to take a picture of, for me it was this and figuring out how to get the darn picture onto the this blog page. After thinking long and hard, I decided to use a picture of my pet Shih Tzu, Brownie, that I snapped a while back. As we have been discussing gender roles and gender typing in class, I would like the readers to guess the gender of my dog and why you think the dog is a he or she.

Although deciding which picture to use was difficult, taking the picture was easy. I came home from my 8:00pm class a few weeks ago and there the dog was, running around, with a cute little bow on it’s forehead to hold up the bangs that was blocking it’s eyes. It was just so cute that I had to take a picture, who would have known that it would come into use. However, loading the picture from the camera into my laptop so I can upload it onto this page was a difficult and frustrating task. I felt very technologically ignorant during this process. For some reason I thought that I had to eject the memory card and stick it into a computer outlet. So I ejected the memory card, but could not find a place on my laptop to put it into! I seriously looked like a cave woman trying to figure out what the heck this metal and plastic device of a thing was while I was looking in every corner of my laptop for a outlet to fit the memory card, especially since it was about 6am in the morning and my hair had been ruffled and tangled by sleep. And then it hit me, that’s right, it took almost a whole 5 minutes for me to figure out that I needed a USB wire, that came with the camera, to connect the camera to the computer so I can load the pictures onto my computer in order for me to upload it onto this blog. So now, after my long frustrating work, there is a picture or my dog on the top of this blog entry.

As I have mentioned in the first paragraph, our class has been discussing gender roles and gender stereotypes and various other types of grouping in class. Looking at the picture, many of people, including myself, would conclude that the dog is a she because of the bow. This bow has been socially constructed to symbolize “female” or “girl” accessories, generally used by “girls”. The fact that the bow is blue may suggest that the owner likes blue or that the owner of the dog does not want the dog to be too feminine, thus, it has a bow, but in a slightly more masculine color, so it’s not a sissy dog. According to stereotyping and generalization, then, one would assume that the dog is a girl. This would not be a wrong assumption if all stereotype and generalizations were true, however since we know that stereotypes and generalizations can be wrong, this can also be false. How then can you distinguish the sex of the dog? Another type of grouping the dog into the binary gender system people has created is by the name. Well, the dog’s name is Brownie. This is a fairly gender neutral name, like Bailey, Kelly and Gene. Thus, what does one do when all the characteristics in which society as constructed as “female” or “male” seems neutral or is ambiguous?

As negative and isolating it may be for us, socially driven creatures, to distinguish and group people, does it not make life more convenient to do so. For example, you would not have to wonder whether Brownie is a boy or girl.Sometimes grouping people can be dangerous, especially in cases which grouping is done with the intention of victimizing people, as Rick as mentioned in class. However, grouping also organizes life and helps society advance, generalizing and assigning certain characteristics to certain gender helps people interact with other because in reality, we don’t have time to go around asking people, what is your gender or are you boy or girl. But then, if we don’t have a system of genderdizing or grouping people, we would not have to ask such questions. Would this be a better life style? Would such world be more “equal”? Or are conflict, tension, difference and hierarchy inevitable elements among social creatures? I am not sure what the world be like if there were no set or shared symbols and grouping. I would imagine life would be very difficult, how would traffic be?! Would we even progress this far? For those who are still reading this post, Brownie is a boy.

Asian as Subculture group?

As I read through the old postings of my classmates, I found a lot of interesting and insightful posts. I may not share the same point of view as everyone, but I do understand why they may think in such manner. However, as an Asian American who was and still a member of, I guess what Warren called, an “Asian subculture” group, I felt a ting of being different in an “abnormal” fashion when he stated: There are so many subcultural groups everywhere you go. Many are considered different from each other. In high school I remember how segregated it was between groups of people with different interests. I don’t want to sound cliché, but here is a small list of groups: “emo”, goths, jocks, “nerds”, hipsters, Asian, etc. I found it funny how Asians were a group of their own with no apparent similar interests, just the fact that they share a common culture/race.
First off, putting Asian on the list of “emo”, “goths”, “jocks” and “nerds” has somehow made me feel belittle as an Asian. It makes me feel as if my race group is similar to that of these often outcaste groups, as if being Asian is abnormal or what not. Maybe I am reading too much into it and Warren is simply trying to make a point that Asians, being that they share similar cultures and beliefs, has created their own subculture groups. But then he states that “Asians were a group of their own with no apparent similar interests”. Perhaps, the situation is different in my schools, but I feel that I share more than just being “Asian” with my gang of Asian friends. We shared a similar culture, Confucius beliefs, an immigrant history, a minority status and a sense of being excluded one point or another. More so than anything else, my group of Asian friends helped me develop an Asian American identity in a school environment that showed little appreciation to Asians and their contribution to our country and an environment that teaches the normality of being Caucasian American. Additionally, there are many Asian groups, not just one, each group with their own special subculture. There were the “ghetto”, but super genius Asian boys who smoked under the pine tree,the rice car boys, the “preppy” Asian kids, and the newly immigrated Asians, to name a few. I guess, I do not think that being Asian qualifies the group as a “subculture”; rather it is the experience, belief, interest and practice that the Asian subgroups shared that created a bond for their subgroup to develop.
As we do not call groups that are comprised of Caucasians only, a subculture for no apparent shared interest other than their whiteness, we should not call Asian groups subculture simply because of their race. I strongly oppose the idea that Asian “subculture” groups or any seemingly race base groups, forms simply because they share the same race, instead the similar experience of discrimination or similar upbringing due to their shared race is what bonds them. I apologize for seeming redundant, however I just want to make clear that Asian subcultures may not be form merely on the grounds of Asian race, rather it is the entire identity of that race which embodies experience, belief, interest that acts as the “similar interest” and the glue of the group.

Above is a clip of Tim Wise’s speech for affirmative action during an Intelligence Square debate about affirmative action. Although Wise’s compassion and enthusiasm towards equality is very evident in his body language and facial expressions, I think that one should observe through listening more so than looking while viewing the clip – the message is much more clear.



Listening to Wise’s arguments for affirmative action reminded me of the discussion of race and difference that the class has been engaging in this passed week. The way which Wise has laid out the various forms of “affirmative action” for non-minorities in our country’s past and present, compared to the “affirmative action” that were available to ethnic minorities in recent history and the different type of public support for them makes me think of how people responds to labels. Because what Wise calls “affirmative action for Whites” usually are not labeled “affirmative action” but rather comes in the forms of “Federal Housing Act” or “Homestead Acts” it is largely supported by the public and has little to no negative connotations. However, as Wise has argued, the privileges and perks of these acts are exclusive to only “Whites”, thus it is very much like an affirmative action for non-ethnic minorities. Yet, the mass public did not voice complaints of the inequality that are inherent in these particular acts. On the other hand, when the Affirmative Action Act was established in the 90s, providing perks that were available only to minorities, there was a great number of opposition from the non-minority population as well as some from the minority populations. Until today, many people are antagonistic towards the affirmative action for minorities. I wonder then, would the responses to the Federal Housing Act been different if it were titled “Affirmative Action for Whites: FHA”, even more so, I wonder if the general public would see “affirmative action” the same way. That is, would they see is as negative and unequal acts that are excluding privileges to one ethnic/racial group as they see affirmative action for minorities? Does label really make a difference in the way we see and judge things?