Dieses Jahr fängt, wie wohl schon bemerkt, auf Deutsch an. Ich wohne ja jetzt wieder in Deutschland und bin daher von deutschen Dingen umgeben. Das hört sich nur blöd an, wenn man sich nicht vergegenwärtigt, dass wir ja irgendwie schon in einer globalen Welt leben. Ich arbeite jetzt auch vorwiegend auf Deutsch und nicht mehr so viel auf Englisch. Vor allem deswegen konnte ich in den letzten Monaten immer seltener nur Gedanken, die mir wichtig waren und die ich gerne auf einem Blog mitgeteilt hätte, ins Englische übertragen. Die meisten Dinge sind ja nur in dem Kontext, in dem sie auftreten oder sich ereignen, interessant. Da ist es mit der Globalisierung oder sogar nur Internationalisierung nicht so weit her. Was mich hier auf Deutsch und in Deutschland interessiert, das ist für Briten oder Amerikaner noch ziemlich lange ziemlich langweilig. Uns interessiert ja auch nicht, warum die Konservativen in Schottland so schlecht dastehen oder wo es mit der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung in dem Land hingeht, und bei den Amerikanern, wo wohl noch am ehesten ein paar mehr Sachen ein wenig Neugier hervorrufen, naja, da wissen wir letztlich ja auch , dass die alle irgendwie nicht ganz richtig ticken, und mehr wollen wir dann schon oft nicht mehr wissen. (Quid pro quo? Man kann es nicht genau sagen.)

Jetzt fange ich das Jahr zwar auf Deutsch an, aber das soll nun auch keine gänzliche Transformation bedeuten. Ist halt alles im Fluss. Kommt sicher auch wahl wieder etwas Englisches mit bei rum. Ändern tut sich an wesentlichen Dingen wenig, egal welche Sprache frau benutzt. Ein großes Problem beim Bloggen ist für mich die Abwesenheit von einem echten Gespräch, also dass man eben auch Antworten kriegt. Das finde ich immer schade. Da sitz ich hier und schreibe und kriege auch erstaunlich viele ‘hits’ im Laufe eines Tages, aber keiner sagt einen Mucks direkt zu mir. Blöd ist auch, dass ich instinktiv immer so etwas wie Lernerfolgsgeschichten schreiben will. Das sind Anekdoten, in denen ich erzähle, wie ich irgendwie was dazu gelernt habe. Das Genre liegt mir irgendwie, mache ich auch ganz gerne, wirklich – Irren ist menschlich und Dazulernen ist einfach toll – aber da macht man sich auch so angreifbar! Das ist immer etwas schwierig. Das verwandte Genre des Kritikübens an den bestehenden Verhältnissen ist mir dann widerum zu arrogant und besserwisserisch, obwohl es mir leider auch liegt.

Also bleibt zum Bloggen immer gar nicht so viel übrig! Oder doch? Sicherlich ändert sich das alles ein wenig, wenn ich auf Deutsch blogge. Erstens muss ich dann keine Befürchtungen haben, meine ehemaligen Forschungsteilnehmer könnten von meinen persönlichsten Irrtümern erfahren. Zweitens kann ich dann auch endlich ein bisschen freier von meiner Forschung erzählen. Da warten sicher schon alle ganz gespannt drauf! Das könnte ich ja auf Englisch auch, irgendwie müsste das gehen, aber da ich die Diss. noch veröffentlichen will und sie einiges an brisantem Material enthält, das den jungen Konservativen in Schottland wohl nicht schmeckt (und den alten auch nicht), erfolgt an der Stelle meistens eine instinktive Selbstzensur, mit der ich wohl meine akademischen Schäflein ins Trockene zu bringen hoffe. Drittens habe ich momentan einfach so, wie ich jetzt schreibe, den meisten Spaß im Leben und will auch nicht andauernd übersetzen müssen. Das ist, wie oben schon angedeutet, nämlich nicht einfach nur eine Frage der Vokabeln. Das ist vielmehr so, als wenn ein Bayer in Berlin bayerische Mundart redet: versteht keiner und finden alle doof.

Deswegen allein ist der Sprung ins Deutsche schon irgendwie befreiend! Ich freu mich auf ein bisschen mehr davon dieses Jahr! Und auf die vielen schönen Tage, die dieses Jahr bringen wird! Bonne année, Happy New Year und Gott Nytt År uns allen! Ich freu mich auch auf eure Kommentare!

Because it's nice when a blog post features a picture, especially if it suits the text ever so slightly.

I am writing this in between fielding calls for work and composing a book chapter that is due in two weeks’ time, and I am writing it because I just remembered that sweet, sweet moment last week when a blog post formed in my mind – I always enjoy that sensation so much – but I didn’t have the time to sit down and string it together cogently. Now is not the time either, and I may actually say it straight away: this blog post has no content unto itself as it is a post about blogging. ‘Entirely self-referential and decadent’, you may think, but perhaps I can manage to contribute something after all.

The ‘great idea’ that I wanted to develop and discuss here last week would have come made its way into the world under the heading ‘Sociology is Cruel’. Yes, it is, and I had understood as much just then. Sociologists are often entirely unfeeling creatures who, believing that they possess superior skills of insight in social matters that no one else has, will conclude all manner of abstract and sometimes condemnatory things about people’s class consciousnesses (or singular? not sure), their gender awareness, role acceptance/compliance/conflict etc. and so on. All this cold-hearted talk dissects people’s lives and reveals what the people themselves fail to understand, i.e. that they are insufficiently critical or progressive-thinking or just plain reflective. People just live. shock-horror!, but they don’t think about that. The capitalist system/Man uses that to its/his advantage so people suffer/become exploited. The idealist or just melioratively inspired sociologist, rather than crying out emphatically in pain about humankind’s misery (I am wilfully exaggerating BTW – this profession is only half as dramatic as I make it out) at times tends to blame the ordinary person him/herself, often in the form of presenting a cold-hearted dissection of how things ‘really’ are. Summa summarum sociology can be said to be a cruel discipline.

That was roughly the argument that I wanted to make. I guess if I had’ve written the post I would’ve referred to hopeful and kind sociologies such as Peter Berger’s and Hans Joas’ (both Catholics – strange huh) so as not to let the entire piece become too much of a lament. I am a sociologist myself after all and there has to be hope for all of us.

The reason I didn’t write the post is that whilst I was still in the phase of pondering the matter and formulating ideas I happened to run into another sociologist. I must have thought something like ‘hm, let’s try this idea out on my peer and see what he says’; in any case, I shared my preliminary thoughts on how sociology was cruel. And you know what happened? My colleague instantly knew where I was coming from, what I meant to convey with those three simple words ‘sociology is cruel’, and I knew that he knew what I meant when he explained the bits of the sociological business that he always finds hard to deal with himself. We sat there reflecting and contemplating together and it was good. I have to say that this short face-to-face conversation has done heaps more for me on this simple matter than any amount of blogging could ever do, and this is not the first time it has happened. Not only did I feel connected and understood, I also received new input straight away in the form of an immediate response to what I had said and so could develop my ideas further. In the end, I simply didn’t need to write the blog post any more. My desire to share had already been quenched super successfully.

This makes me question the point of blogging. Can we only ever write publicly about things that don’t really matter? Because when it matters we want to discuss it face-to-face? Or do we blog when we don’t have the opportunity to have close contact with like-minded individuals? I know that people blog for all sorts of reason and I also know that I was most active on this here blog when I felt most alienated from the environment that I was ensconsed in at the time. The situation couldn’t be more different now, and I am happy it has changed, but because it has changed blogging is now a hugely ambivalent practice for me. Others may feel the same way – you, dearest reader, may feel that way in fact! If you do, how do you deal with it?

(For context: The topic is Scottish Conservative women, their role in the Scottish Conservative Party past and present and so on…)

You might wonder where this is coming from so suddenly. So did I when I read this piece that explains the majority of German banks’ reluctance to invest in hedge fonds or, shall we say, their tendency to avoid risky investments, with the mere fact that Germans are generally anally fixated because German parents don’t change German children’s diapers very often. True story as per the current issue of Vanity Fair; if you’re keen, here’s a German analysis of the piece. Anal fixation apparently comes about when one is exposed to one’s own excrements for unnaturally long periods of time and it is expressed in exaggerated avoidance of dirt – hence the ‘clean’ bankers.

The reason I chose to mention this topic on this extremely clean blog is the following: Claiming that German bankers are hesitant to do risky investments because they had to spend so much time in their own poop when they were little and because that led to the development of an exaggerated fondness for things being done cleanly and orderly – well, that’s a clear case of hermeneutics gone wrong! Just because Fact A ‘Germans invest conservatively’ and Fact B ‘German parents (allegedly – I want to see proof of this!) like to leave their kids smoldering in their excrements for long periods of time’ have one thing in common, which is that both these facts apply to Germans, doesn’t mean that there is a causal relationship at work here. Furthermore, just because it makes for a good story (for which audience?) doesn’t mean it is true, and just because it suggests a kind of mechanistic causality between ‘how often do I change my kid’s diapers’ and ‘what kind of person will the kid eventually become’ which I am sure many parents would buy into IF THERE WAS ANYTHING TO THIS LOGIC – which there is not – also doesn’t mean it is true.

So I say, folks: Check the stories that you are presented for the kinds of causalities they offer, especially when they are trying to explain an entire nation’s financial behaviour with one single natal behavioural fact.

It is true though that people outside Germany tend to be amazed about Germans’ relationship to their own bodily waste. A deep sense of befuddlement and ignorance of the German soul marks some of the conversations on the topic. English anthropologist Kate Fox, for instance, believes that German toilet bowls ‘catch’ the drop first so that the user, upon completion of the job, can get up, turn around and be amazed at seeing the finished product. She believes that the German toilet user needs to first know – and seeing really is believing in this case – what has been going on inside his or her own body. Only then he/she will flush, Fox claims (in this book).

The above is another clear case of overinterpretation. Search your brain for a second, dear enlightened reader, and remember what else we know about Germans. Yup, there was this thing with the practicality focus…dropping makes a splash and catching the drop on a sort of intermediary terrace doesn’t. Which is why German toilet bowls used to be shaped the way they were (as with all thing, we’re adopting the American system now). Practicality rules over anal fixation. QED.

The danger with monocausal explanations is that they are beguilingly simple. We fall for them every time. They sway us easily especially if we want to believe the ludicrously reductionistic proposition that is being proffered. Such must have been the case with the German-financial-anal-fixation piece in Vanity Fair. In light of the fact that Germany came through the recession so well I would say, however, that dealing with one’s own financial shit is always a good option no matter how one came to acquire the capability to do that. (Seriously, what does it matter??) I don’t feel the need to reduce German banks’ hesitancy about risky investments with Freudian intellectual acrobatics. If I did, then I’d probably be saying to all my American friends with kids: ‘Just let them kids be for a little while yet, you never know, it might save your economy.’

If you’re not put off by those introductory statements then you might find the following quite interesting. Paul Goodman, writing on the Tory grassroots internet platform ConsHome.com, posted an open letter to David Cameron this morning that illuminates some of the conflict within the Conservative Party about the course currently taken in relation to rioting and rioters. I particularly want to draw your attention to the last two paragraphs in which Goodman comments on the proposed British Bill of Rights. Goodman is addressing Cameron directly and he is making a valid point about the dark side of social morality as expressed by the PM.

“We’re working [said David Cameron in his speech yesterday] to develop a way through the morass by looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights…The truth is, the interpretation of human rights legislation has exerted a chilling effect on public sector organisations…It is exactly the same with health and safety.”

This is the big one, isn’t it?  Since the riots, you and other Ministers have made a series of announcements.  Convicted rioters could lose their council homes.  Even those not jailed could lose their benefits.  Child offenders will be named and shamed.  And so on.  But how on earth is all this compatible with the Human Rights Act?

The full post is here.

After a few days in Banff and Jasper you might think that I'd be posting more photos from the trip. Instead, I am posting a landscape that was taken minutes away from where I live, in a city on the prairies, population close to one million. The sights and sounds of construction are all around me. New houses are being built to camera left. In fact, I had to point the camera more north than I wanted to or I would be photographing the new constructi … Read More

via Dan Jurak's Alberta Landscape Photo Blog

I normally welcome the change of the seasons but mid-August and the leaves are turning…that’s just way too early! I hope all you guys had a much better summer or are actually still in the midst of it as it should be. I know parts of Canada are in the same dismal situation we in the Northern party of Germany are in; as I heard autumn was approaching fast in Alberta at the beginning of August already.

All this is very sad. I’m not going to stick my head in the sand now; it’s still warm, even if the amounts of rain pouring down on us are of biblical proportions. All the same, here are my best summer pics. It was pretty and maybe we’ll have a few more nice days. But summer proper is over and a very short one it was, too.

This last one is a favourite. The area is a nature reserve near my house. It’s been raining so much this summer that the entire area is now impassable as you can see here:

And last but not least, below is the kind of view that I love most about summer in the Northern Plains and that I will miss very much. See the fat clouds and the equally round and fat trees? Mirror images of one another, great friends and embittered foes, lovers and partners in crime, companions of especially Flemish landscape painters throughout the centuries and signature lanscape items where I am from:

So, last week I handed in my PhD thesis which is a good step closer to my childhood dream of working in academia, and what can I tell you: the experience of finishing it was nothing like I had thought it would be. To be honest, the submission of my thesis felt flat, sort of off, and until now I wasn’t sure why that was the case.

Months ago, as I was drafting the last chapters and tweaking theoretical bits in the thesis I used to think ‘once you have submitted this thesis you’ll take time off and you’ll really celebrate because this was a major achievement’. It really was a major achievement, always is, right? It deserves to be acknowledged in the form of breaking out of the daily routine and doing something special. But it wasn’t to be. About four weeks ago I noticed that my thinking on the matter had changed substantially. ‘Take time off to celebrate’ had morphed into ‘you really have to be finished by the deadline because you need to start doing the research for the book chapter on Scottish Tory women; I need to start with that because I need to be finished with the research by October. Simultaneously, I need to start working on a literature review for work. I need to start making plans for future publications, too. Where am I going to publish my PhD?’

The submission of my thesis felt very different from what I thought it would be like because, I think, in the process of writing it, I had become an academic. I truly think that’s how it was. Therefore, once I reached the end of the road I found myself ensconced in multiple projects and with various obligations and plans – a pretty normal situation for someone working at university. I grew up a bit especially in the last few weeks of working on the document, as I saw it all coming together and as I made everything fit together.

Without even meaning to I had become an academic simply by doing the things academics do. It was the active process that changed everything, and most transitions are processes after all, not singular events. This is a trite observation perhaps but easily overlooked. Spoiled in our imagination I for one tend to think of important events in a Hollywood sort of way, as in: ‘When you are in the moment you will feel how great it is.’ But mostly I think you don’t because many important events in life aren’t events at all but longer processes, or phases that one goes through that lead to an insight. There often is no focal point where it all happens and then everything is different afterwards.Think of marriage, for example: longer process rather than singular event; even the wedding is really a process too.

That’s why the mere act of submitting the thesis didn’t have the meaning I had assumed it would have. I am, after all, not a kid any more. I fit the size of the dream much better now than I did back then and I am not so stunned by the enormity of what happened there. Besides, once you get there the dream doesn’t seem so dream-like either. It’s a lot of work, in fact, and, at the end of the day, it’s simply my life now. And that’s actually a good development. Flat, uneventful, but still overall very positive.

(I still haven’t had time off though.)

Not that all reading is awesome, of course. Most reading probably isn’t. The book that made me feel warm inside was an edited volume discussing power relations in academia and I read two essays in it discussing the PhD student-PhD supervisor relationship. So there I was, sitting at my kitchen table months and months after I stopped caring about this topic, and someone far away was describing precisely the troubles I had had and discussed them insightfully, without moaning and without accusing anyone. I was touched both how personal the writing was and also how fair and balanaced the difficulties in the PhD student-PhD supervisor relationship were addressed. So on the one hand I felt connected and understood, and I also learned something about fairness.

And that’s what a great book can do for you, I think, and why great books are so utterly invaluable: they connect you to the world and they help you extend your horizon, too. (People can do both as well, of course.) It doesn’t matter whether it’s a fictional or non-fictional book; in this case, it was non-fiction. One of the greatest works of fiction that I have ever come across and that also made me feel connected while teaching me valuable lessons about life was Jane Eyre. It’s truly oOne of the greatest books of all times, for women especially.

Feeling connected is obviously important for the reader as reading is per definition is solitary occupation. Even in a globalised world I consider it a miracle to feel connected to a writer who wrote what I am reading now in another country and perhaps even a different time, and yet we both had similar experiences and subsequent thoughts! This discovery always makes me feel connected, not to the writer as another person so much (though that too, but that’s not so super important) but to the world of ideas. When I see that someone else experienced what I did and reflected about it in a similar way, then I know that there is something to my ideas, enough anyway for some publisher to accept them in an article or book. This in turn encourages me to think and to take thinking seriously. And that’s what a good book can do for you and, accidentally, that’s also why it is so important for children to start to read early ( how else are they going to turn into proper little booklings, hm?).

So I love books because I gain courage from reading and because I know that others feel the same way. I also love books because I learn so much from them all the time. Even a badly edited book or one with semi-poor contents can still impart a lesson. Books in general widen my understanding of what the world is like and they help those of us who can’t travel places and talk to people all the time to widen our knowledge of the world. They teach us about the ‘possible possibilities’ (love this phrase by Steve Hitlin!) in terms of human thought and action so that we know what could reasonably be expected from a person or a group in situation x.

Most reading only makes sense when you are also living in the world at the same time, for how else can you relate to what you are reading? In that sense I think saying that I love books means that I love life and living, too. Books are only good in so far as they are commenting on life.

And that’s why it is so easy to say it: I love books! Reading is only not commendable when it’s all you have. It can’t substitute real social contact and it can’t stand in for the imperceptible learning that occurs all the time as we interact with others. It can only complement these processes, which is why avid readers, whilst sitting in the bar talking, will draw connections between what’s going on right now and some book that they have read or are reading, or why they will interrupt their reading to reflect on a personal experience. Reading is really just another form of living. It’s the reflective life, and such is the life of a bookling. That’s why I love books.