Choosing to shove my own head up my own ass - a research proposal

Fuzzy, Emergent, and Autonomous

This study is partly inspired by a personal professional engagement with communities at the grassroots level in highly politicized environments – a condition where sometimes subtle and delicate variations of community engagement offer life-enhancing opportunities. Of equal inspiration is the influence of Media Ecology, which studies the impacts of different media on human beings; it is slightly confusing and yet, media ecologists have personally been some of the most profoundly inspiring and influential theorists read. This confluence of interests has lead to this novel study of the beneficence of participatory social engagement techniques. This case study will attempt to consider the case of social engagement techniques as media phenomena, and assess them from the context of media ecology. It will ask how real life participatory social engagement techniques generate the media phenomena of mass conditioning, or autonomy, freedom, and liberation.

Typically, from a social development perspective, social engagement techniques are categorized and framed as affecting co-generation of knowledge, and advancing the common good (Buckles & Chevalier, 2008. p.11). Media from that vantage point are viewed as external to and affecting social engagement techniques. This study will make its case by first reversing that perspective and attempting to reframe social engagement techniques as media centered primarily on Marshal McLuhan’s definition of media and the affects of media on society. Additionally, this study will examine media ecology literature in areas pertaining to the relationship between media and autonomy and in general media ecology theory for understanding the impact of media, in this case social engagement techniques, on society. This study will provide a fresh perspective for understanding of the nature of social engagement techniques by drawing on this comparative between affects of participatory social development techniques and those of other media.


Considering Social Engagement Techniques as Media

Social engagement techniques are crucial to group dialogue, for creation and mobilization of practical and authentic decision making (Chevalier and Buckles, p. 19). The primary value expressed within social engagement techniques is that collaborative and cooperative interaction builds consensus and produces meaningful outcomes (Chevalier and Buckles, p.15 ). In addition to this social engagement, the intent of community development or participatory social engagement techniques (list ?) is to help people uncover shared culture; to modify and transform culture.

For McLuhan his definition of media includes all technologies, their forms and structures, due primarily to their affect on how humans perceive and understand the world (McLuhan, 1964, p.8). McLuhan uses interchangeably the words medium, media, and technology. Analogously, social engagement techniques affect how we perceive and understand the world around us and therefore fit appropriately within this definition of media.

Media Affects

In earlier formative years a strong personal enjoyment was garnered in watching a lot of television, never considering its impact on the mind, thoughts, or reactions. Blissfully unaware, there was no personal concern with what McLuhan and his contemporaries in the field of media ecology consider - that television, and all emerging media technologies, connect with and interplay with our nervous systems. This idea of technological somnambulism (Winner, date? p.105) stands in direct opposition to the western world’s construct of freedom, autonomy and liberty and questions the reality and existence of these social memes in the current storm like media environment.

The Medium is the Message

McLuhan observes that any medium "amplifies or accelerates existing processes", (Levinson, 1999 p. 36 ) introduces a, "change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into human association, affairs, and action" (Levinson, 1999 p. 36 ), resulting in, "psychic, and social consequences." (Levinson, 1999 p. 36 ). This is an especially relevant interpretation of media; a social and psychic message dependent wholly on the medium itself, regardless of the content produced (Levinson, 1999 p. 36 ). This is fundamentally the meaning of McLuhan’s the medium is the message.

A Theoretical Mélange

Of primary consideration in this study is the power of the media is an example of technology exerting control over human destiny. Often viewed as a mechanism of change, media are almost invariably manipulated by special interests, whether public, corporate, or governmental (Ellul, 1965). Foucault (1966) contends all periods of history have possessed specific underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable discourse to us and that these conditions have changed over time, in major and sudden shifts. However, if the electronic environment interplays with all the sensory faculties (Levinson, 1999 p. 36-37) cultures are merely hoicking up their own titillation by new media responses framed incorrectly as cultural preferences or interests. This theoretical paradox leaves a dilemma. If you work with these technological electronic media, you may merely be servicing the need for cultural, sensory, or electric titillation. The person who makes video games, movies, books, music, and TV may present an idea, a concept, a clever presentation of psychological intrigue, but the communication is to an audience who needs more and more electric media as a consolation, or a massage. The manipulation in this sense is not corporate, or even truthful, but rather banal lust for sensory stimulation. This study will further refine and understand the degree to which the development of social engagement techniques meet an aesthetic lust for sensory stimulation.

Haraway, (1991) uses the cyborg as a metaphor explaining how the fusion of machine and organism exposes ways that things considered natural, like human bodies, are not, but are constructed by our ideas about them. Haraway feels that this cyborg myth has the potential to free us from a desperate search for similarity with one another and again uncover a paradox worth exploring in this study. The prevalent construct when considering social engagement techniques is the meme of the fully integrated multi-stakeholder collective. Defining social engagement techniques as media reframes the mass mind not as a homogeneous public, but rather as a group of people who have instantaneous, simultaneous communication to each other. (Kroker, 1984,). The cyborg meme operates on the idea that everyone becomes simultaneous within the electronic media context. This study will assist in the exploration of liberation, freedom, and autonomy as understanding concurrent separateness - an awareness of the effects of the media environment of social engagement.

Dienst (1994) shows television can be imagined in a number of ways: as a profuse flow of images; as a machine that produces new social relationships, as the last lingering gasp of Western metaphysical thinking; as a stuttering relay system of almost anonymous messages; as a fantastic construction of time. This study will assist in how social engagement techniques can be imagined in a number of ways: as a profuse flow of images, as a machine that produces social relationships; as the last lingering gasp of western metaphysical thinking; as a stuttering relay system of almost anonymous messages; and as a fantastic construction of time.

Media Ecology and True Autonomy, Liberty, and Freedom

Eisenstein (1979) demonstrates why it is important to understand the problems of media especially in the light of submission en masse to control by programs of our social and emotional lives. Eisenstein carefully examined the transition between the eras of script and print, finding in the latter transition an disregarded feature of Europe’s transformation from  its Middle Age to its modern era i.e. how printing effected the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. Viewing social engagement techniques as media and the effects they create as well as understanding these as causes of and affect upon the nature of a particular environment, as Eisenstein has done, could accelerate the advance to true autonomy, liberty and freedom. Where social engagement techniques are understood to have the capacity en masse to reframe the previously explained “hoiked up electric titillation” (see above) as prevalent social profiles and nuances. Studying systemic oppression, racism, poverty and other memes of social oppression as media fads will take a fresh discipline in this study beyond the traditional socio - political memes. Defined as media, understanding the ultimate message of social engagement techniques and what they're trying to get across takes on a fresh dimension through the perspective of media ecology. From this perspective the consideration for assessing then arises defined by the construct of considering if social engagement techniques are merely miming the total release of the ‘hoiked up electric titillation’, or are generating genuine release allowing one to be as free as the wind. This framing leads also to postulate how the opposing impulse, i.e. domination over freedom, can be understood. And that's why the understanding of social engagement techniques as media has the potential to better understand that impulse for dominance over human freedom, human discipline or human inspiration.
Illich (1988) posits that changes can be attained if individuals "awaken" to the fact that each person's taken for granted understanding of the world, is seen as being formulated and handed down over the centuries. These conventional perspectives lock individuals into certain solutions and prevent recognition of new ways of living in the world. For example, Illich reflects that the computer has created a change in which thoughts are arranged more by the logic and efficiency of media than by the natural meanings embodied in a live discourse.

Method

Case study research excels at bringing us to an understanding of a complex issue or object and can extend experience or add strength to what is already known through previous research. This qualitative research method to examine contemporary real-life situations and provide the basis for the application of ideas and extension of methods. Researcher Robert K. Yin defines the case study research method as an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used (Yin, 1984, p. 23).
Some dismiss case study research as useful only as an exploratory tool; as the implication of this study will be primarily personal, this dismissal is redundant. Working with McLuhan’s definition of media and the concept of a resultant psychic communal electronic integration of all humankind; this critical application of fresh personal understandings of media ecology juxtaposed against a unique construct of social engagement as media will lead to an emergent autonomous and organic social engagement tested and applied personally; a social engagement neither ritualistic nor content driven; a social engagement that is fuzzy, emergent, and autonomous of corporate, public or political hypnotic trance inducement.

References:
Chevalier, J. & Buckles, D. (2008). SAS², A Guide to Collaborative Inquiry and Social Engagement. International Development Research Centre. Sage Publications.
Dienst, R., (1994). Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television. Durham: Duke University.
Illich, I., (1988). ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. North Point.
Press.
Ellul, J., (1965). Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. NY: Random House.
Eisenstein, E., (1979). The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communication and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M. (1966). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. NY: Vintage.
Gershenfeld, N. (1999). When Things Start to Think. NY: Henry Holt & Co.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. NY: Routledge.
Kroker, A. (1984). Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. Montreal: New World Perspectives.
Levinson, A. (1999). Digital McLuhan: A guide to the Digital Millenium. London:
Routledge.
McLuhan M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1st Ed. McGraw Hill, NY; reissued MIT Press, 1994, Lewis H. Lapham, Introduction to Understanding Media (First MIT Press Edition).
McLuhan, M. & Powers, B. (1989). The Global Village : Transformations in world life and media in the 21st century. Oxford University Press. New York, N.Y..
Yin, R. K. 1984. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Winner, L. (2004). Technology as Forms of Life. In Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. David M. Kaplan. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. 103-113.