My Lecture Notes For August

These are most of the lecture notes I took in August

29 August 2008
Importance of the free press

News media as a way of speaking truth to power

Public sphere as a place of debate and free exchange of ideas

A check on state abuses of power.

Example

McCarthyism in the US

CBS – Columbia Broadcast News
Edward R Morrow and news team

Film: Good Night and Good Luck
Nominated for Oscar Awards

McCarthy’s “rooting out communists” has been compared to Bush’s War on Terror in which people are targeted if they are not “native” American.

The McCarthy era

McCarthyism
Late 1940 – early 1950

Context of Cold War
Soviet Union tests atomic bomb in 1949

Execution of Rosenberg’s’ in 1953
Communist party in early 20th C

Questioning loyalty and accusations of espionage

Loyalty letter

“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist party of the US?”

Hollywood – Black list – pressure to name names

HUAC – House Un-American Committee


27 August 2008
Research ethics

Issues

power of the researcher – making private things public
“informed consent”
Vulnerable populations
Children
Prisoners
Mentally ill or disabled
Victims of trauma
Refugees and those without legal status or in danger of arrest
Potentially stigmatized individuals

sensitive information and confidentiality

Principles

Protection and respect – do not harm

Will my interviews create harm, confusion or embarrassment?
Will the fact of my interview place my subject in danger?
Will revealing my identity of my source compromise their well-being in any way?
Is this person in a position to give informed consent?
Does this person I interview believe that they do not have a choice?
Are they under the impression that they will be rewarded if they answer or punished if they do not?

Transparency

contact details
research description
how data will be used?

Professional ethics

agreement to represent the best aspects of academic professionalism (conduct)
representing the UKZN community
ensuring your work is original – not plagiarized
issue of faking the data – accountability issue

Permission/ informed consent
photographs
use of names
avoiding terribly personal questions

22 August 2008
Community

The people who are most local and central to you represent your community

This does not represent the notion of a political community as that involves the nation

Newspapers and nations

Community

Various meanings and realities
Examples, intimate vs. abstract

Political community and the contemporary and normative idea of ‘the nation’

Benedict Anderson (1936- ) wrote a book called Imagined communities 1983

Asked:

Why are the people ready to die or kill of behalf of the nation
What explains nationalism and patriotism?
Why are people so committed to nations?
Why do people think that their personal interest is the same as the interest of every person in the country?

Often it is a voluntary matter that people choose to take up arms and kill/die for their country.

Proudly South African

products made in SA by SA people
the flag
the national anthem
Heritage day
Olympics
Embassies


National community must be imagined and imaginable to population at large

A nation is an imagined community

Not unreal
Even though there are different people who look different from us – they still share part in the nation

Print capitalism and the role of the newspaper

time and simultaneity
nationalizing space
standardization of language

Things that show we are part of a nation

maps
Story books
History books
Televisions
Laws
Police
Institutions

The primary tool of joining people to the nation – is the newspaper

it shows us what goes on in the world and in the country
It shows us that a lot of people have the same stake on the world.

How is this nation affected?

15 August 2008

At least four major historical conditions that are important in the history of newspaper:

the technology of script and writing invented
materials and technology for producing a newspaper
Mass literacy [lots of people who know how to read]
social institutions and ideas about politics that make newspapers marketable prospect, something that people are motivated to buy and read [e.g. state, market economy, civil society and mass education]

Paper society is not really that hard to produce

China made paper – 2nd Century BCE
Only produced in Europe – 12th Century AD

Papyrus, clay, animal skins, rocks and wax tables are mediums of what was used before paper was invented

Mass produce theory – printing processes
Block writing – full page of text

China – moveable type
Block of each letter
China used Ceramics

Europe

developments of a moveable type
Johannes Guttenburg
1440
Germany
The printing press
Metal and oil based ink

Paper manufacture in England

Craft guild as manufacturers

Single sheet
Fibers - rags etc
Frames with dry screens

Textiles and automation
“Spinning Jenny” 1765
Implication for production and social relations?

J.N.L. Robert, 1798 paper making machine
Wood pulp and chemicals 1831
Craft guilds out of business or had to adopt and build their own paper mills

Distribution: the importance of Postal services and networks

Newsletters

Apprentices would be children up to the age of 7 and spend their time picking apart the rags and wood that would be used to form the paper

James Hargreaves – Spinning Jenny

A lot of new materials are coming form the ‘new world’ – North and South America

1798

J.N.L. Robert
The mesh paper making machine that can make a role of paper
This put the craft guilds out of work

The business of making paper has sprouted other businesses as well

For distribution of paper you need some sort of transportation systems

The post office carries the news in the 18th and 19th Century

Newsletters

merchants, noble men and Kings
commodity prices, exchange rates
uprising in a particular area
fires and weather conditions
gathering information
were sold by subscription
goings on in the world

What about mass literacy? And what socio-political institutions make the newspaper a marketable and useful prospect?

History of Capitalism, the history of the public sphere and the history of the Nation –state. Intertwined


England
Pre-industrial England
‘enclosures’
In 1688, Parliament form, men of property
Class bourgeoisie and proletariat
Urbanization and factories
Ideas changing: “the enlightenment”

Monarchy ruled over pre-industrial England
Country is divided in class
Merchants did trade in between colonies and also had the newsletters
People started to debate in public forums through the medium of text

Enclosures were where the landless people could make their living and let their animals graze
These enclosures were covered with fences
They became privatized

Glorious revolution

Dutch King
Law making came into the hands of the property owning elite
Voting remained to the free English men who owned property.
A need for unskilled labour
The landless people became the working class because they had jobs in the factories

Urbanization took place because the landless people now had jobs

6 August 2008
Orality and literacy

Changes in technology do have changes in society

Not all changes in technology impact changes that take place in society

Changes in technology that impacted society

electricity
cellphone
television
radio
cars
guns
stone tools – farming

technology and historical change
writing as a technology

oral cultures have quite often been societies without writing, as illiterate or pre-literate. But this is misleading. Bias

Literacy is essential
Schools are there to improve literacy

What is lost with the invention of writing

Plato 3BCE

Plato was not happy with writing things down – the proper place was in your head

People who are born into oral cultures have a much greater capacity for memory

Writing is held in text and it can be archived

People who have been exposed to writing can only with great difficulty imagine what being in an oral culture is like.

Mega memory

Visual word is different than the visual object

Sound only exists as it is almost gone
Word as sound – word as events

Speech as action

Weight of words in oral cultures

Writing things down can be anonymous

Oaths and pledges – oral cultures

Ceremonial – ritual and religious utterances

Magic words – words as power

News in oral cultures – what you know about the world is told to you

Knowledge is then what can be recalled, remembered, passed down from one generation to the other

Memory aids – mnemonic devices

Thoughts in rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetition, alliteration, rhyme, formulas, clichés

Story telling vs. story writing

Oral cultures have skills that have been lost, or are threatening to become lost

Formulas for knowledge – proverbs

Orality is participatory – interactive, communal

Writing can take place removed from people, so it can be solitary

Willlem Boshoff

Artist
Used words in art to express himself.

13 August 2008
Literacy and power

Invention of writing has an impact on how a society works

Also a focus on how a political society functions

to expand communication networks
to rationalize social institutions

When a useful and new technology is developed it may affect the whole society as well as the power structure that the society has. Also, it will affect how the society is seen in the eyes of the world.

Literacy emerges among the elite
origins of class and inequality relevant to the history of literacy
Neolithic revolution, about 10 – 13 thousand years ago.
Begins in ‘fertile crescent’ also China, Egypt, and Mexico. Domestication
Impact?
Societies settle, dwellings become more permanent
Changes in land use patterns through cultivation and grazing

Elite

the rich and powerful
it emphasizes the inequalities that were found in Historical context
Kings, Priests and States

Literacy

Is a tool in political and economic power

Neolithic revolution

Neo – new
Lithic – stone

The most important revolution
The birth of farming

Writing and farming began in ‘fertile crescent’

Farming

Domesticating certain plants and animals

Domesticating

The art of growing and bringing things into your own home range

Significance?

Changes occur with farming

Hunter-gather society

Follow the herd – seasonal
Follow the plants and the route that it grows

Nomadic community

Easy to move
Small communities
You just have what you own and can carry with you
Oral culture

Information is passed down from generation to generation in an oral manner

Neolithic revolution

societies settle down
changes in land use
surplus food
Population growth with the extra food.
Land becomes privatized
Storage of food becomes possible
Change in technology and food
Private property emerges; and with it inequality [rich and poor]
Organized trade of surplus
Division of labour: hierarchical forms of social organization
Political classes: Chiefs, Kings, ruling classes, priests
Technological and intellectual innovations
Labour: Serfs, slaves, indentured labour
Military power, standing armies

Why is this history relevant for a history of literacy?

Social divisions and hierarchies
Separation is bolstered by writing
Literacy of royal courts, a specialized skill
Empires
Military command from a distance
Population registers. Taxes, Tribute etc…
Bureaucracies
Theories of rule, theories of war etc…
Loans and debts, charters and enterprise
Territorial expansion and economic networks
Law encodement

Capitalism based on private property and banking

Cultural divide between town and country

What about the non-elite majority?

“mass literacy” only recent:

Ideological reasons
Technological reasons
not yet a view that ordinary people or non elite people should make any opinion or voice in the political ideas that govern them
Riots or uprisings, but… not based on the idea that the people should rule.
Ideology and social structure not geared towards democracy

the origins of mass literacy coincide with a rise in an ideology moving towards a ‘democratization’ of politics

writing can be used to challenge power

how? Example – treason in the 18th century

Literacy, citizenship and civic action

“news media”

1 August 2008
New forms of delivery for news media
Relationship between readership and the news media

Blog
Web log
Web – world wide web
Log – journal/ record
Once a blog is published it can be edited and updated
Reasons for creating a blog
Advertise something you want to sell

Expectations of a blog
Blog needs to have a title
Blog needs to have a subtitle
It needs to be catchy
Every entry has a date
Most recent entry at the top
Each entry has a title
It can have photos
It can have hyperlinks