CLAUD

Friday, August 27, 2010

"Why is this watch nicer than that?"

Today Yongquan posted me an interesting question, whic was "How do girls tell which watch is nicer? To me, these two look the same, same type...how do you tell whether which one is more 'better'"?

I had no ready answer, and went on to describe the differences of the two watches, forgetting that perhaps, that was not what he actually meant. Well, to him (and the guys), "they both look nice."

So the discussion went on to ask things like how do we discern 'taste' and why do we follow the magazine's advice on fashion? After all, it's only one (mostly anonymous) person and there may be others out there who find that the 'fashion failure' actress's outfit was actually quite nice.

In a sense, it drove me to think like how we see ourselves, is really how we think others see us. Some girls go to the extent of putting on very elaborate make-up (me included sometimes) to impress upon others. It's pehaps a mark on distinction: being apart from the norm.

Which is why I think fashion is a paradox. On one hand, you want people to accept your designs, yet not to the point where 'everyone has it' and remain that exclusivity to the label. On the other hand, you don't want to be too unique such that you don't have your designs accepted.

That's why the French has this term avant garde, meaning literally 'advance guard' or more commonly meaning at the forefront of things.

Being a neo-marxist ( to the layperson: meaning having doubts that everyone else is screwing you for their own benefit), I think the 'exclusivity' is just for firms to mark up their prices and carry their brand across such that you buy. By the time you realise that everyone is carrying the same bag, you would have been the 'have-beens' who not only willingly participated to be normal (instead of being different as your first intended) but also bought, literally, into the whole marketing scheme of things.

I'm exceptionally critical of big fashion labels who 'over-sell' their products. There are some designs that are ass-ugly, but with the proper calls, people will buy into them.

That's where the fashion editors come in. They help further this goal of making the product 'in' by using the magazine's label to legitimise their claim. The more people read, the more believe who believe in the fashion editor, the more validated the claim - although it can be a personal opinion from the start.

That's why I appreciate Dr. Neo in informing us that many times, normative statements are taken for true fact, and over time as enough people believe in it, they are reproduced and are represented as 'the norm'.

As a Sociologist, or Social Geographer, the focus on deviance and abjects often bring light to obscured groups of people. However, we sometimes forget how the norm is 'created' and 'shaped' through mechanisms underlying those. Of course, the argument is that these hegemonic ideas are shaped by people in power, people in position who stands to benefit from this. Definition is power isn't it?

Yet, in this case really, the power comes in numbers. If enough people believe this bag to be 'awesome', then it will be. Look at the Hermes Birkin bag, about USD10,000 for one. Yet when we take the label away, the bag really looks like any others one can get at Metro. So the meanings constructed behind the label is very powerful indeed - because enough people believe in the branding.

As far as my knowledge goes, I don't buy the rudimentary economist's argument that because of the lack in supply, the Birkin bag is expensive. It's the idea of demand, how it's created in the first place. Where did this demand come from? Who is willing and why willing to buy? How is a non-price factor of demand, which is taste and preferences, shaped?

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Today qualitative lecture, I was bursting in disagreement with the lecturer, to some may seem like a blasphemy.

Firstly, no one, or thing is sacred. So similar, existing ideas can always be replaced by more suitable ones right?

I'm stuck with two things. One of which is that qualitative research is running in risk of making an ecological fallacy, meaning making conclusions of the group (society) based on individual empirical data. So that's a problem. I have no issues when conclusions are made based on THAT group, or THAT person, but to blow it to the proportion of the 'forest' from a 'tree' is pretty fallacious to me. We can have thematic commonalities, but how sure are we that those themes are really what is 'out there' or just figments of our imagination, littered by one's own subjective experiences?

I guess the way to solve this problem is to have multiple people going into the field to repeat the research? Anthropologist tend to have people going into the same tribe at different points in time to study about the same people. So it's pretty much interesting to see how points of similarities emerge. Yet, there are also key differences. Those discrepancies grab at me.

Secondly, interpreting social signs and action in the context need not necessarily be confined to qualitative research isn't it? While survey data is indeed quantifiable, the questions are asked in context to the social setting. We also interpret those data and I don't see (at least not yet) quantitative researchers in Sociology trying to find general laws. They find general TREND, and that seems oddly familar to qualitative research isn't it?

So instead of interpreting the individual lived experiences, to an extent, quantitative research is trying to maximise the collection of many 'lived experiences'. They both have their short comings, the former being too in depth the risking the objectivity of the researcher, as well as, in my opinion, making an ecological fallacy. The latter would at some point hit a point where there is only so much in depth data they can collect on 'lived experiences'.

I'm told that which approach you take, depends on your assumptions about society. However, what if my assumptions are that Society consists of both the macro and micro scale? What if the individual living in the set of the macro also share certain common trends and can thus be generalised? Of course, I'm assuming that there is a certain threshold number that can be statistically manipulated.

I'm not against qualitative research, of course sometimes it's very important in getting into the thick of things especially where quantitative cannot reach or cannot capture. However, I disagree that we need to choose between the two - despite the differences in assumptions of each, since my assumptions are that there is a place of Interpretive method in Positivism. It's just a matter of how much to use of each? To what extent is our research based on Positivism, or Interpretive Constructionism - some need more of the latter, some less.

It's a big thing to 'take on': especially this divide is pretty much stuck for a long time between schools of thought. However, it's never too late to challenge the applicability of this dichotomy. Inspired of the questioning of the physical-human dichotomy, sometimes we miss out the fact that we are living as the 'norm' as well as taking on the identity of the 'deviant' - depending on socio-geographical context, time and who we're interacting with.

Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture as of now. Maybe I'll come to realise at the end of sem that this dichotomy is real is Sociology and the reason why.

In the meantime, why is that bracelet better than that? Maybe you can try answering "because I say so."

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