{"id":633,"date":"2004-10-20T00:03:43","date_gmt":"2004-10-20T04:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/10\/20\/customer-on-strike\/"},"modified":"2004-10-20T00:03:43","modified_gmt":"2004-10-20T04:03:43","slug":"customer-on-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/10\/20\/customer-on-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer on strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The following is something I wrote in response to a bunch of posts at Shelley<\/a>‘s, which I first thought I’d post as a comment here<\/a>, or maybe here<\/a> but when it got longer and longer, seemed too overbearing for a comments board. But please, read these entries at Burningbird if you haven’t already. This topic has a history.<\/p>\n

I am distressed by the drive to turn *everything* into a matter of marketplace. When Dave Winer wrote<\/a> — apropos of the recent Jon-Stewart-on-Crossfire event that Shelley noted a few entries back<\/a> — that “we” are customers of journalism, I was repelled. When he claimed that academia has learned this “lesson” because academia now treats students like customers<\/a> (see comments), I knew that he didn’t understand academia *at all* — not at all, even one little bit — and I had to conclude that his citizens-as-customers analogy was just as misguided. The impetus to drive teaching at universities via a student-as-customer model has contributed more to grade-inflation and student “shopping” than to critical thinking. It has contributed to a general dumbing down, even though it hasn’t slowed down competition at the very top of the heap, because the really bright kids still understand that it takes elbows to carve out a position. But it has done not much at all — and please, ask the people in the trenches, the ones who get “rated” by all those dumb student evaluations and who have to adapt their content to this market — for conveying a critical, difficult, or challenging content. Aside from those few “top” students who excel because they’re smart enough and because they have to get into the right graduate programs, content — for the majority of “customers” — has to be fun, otherwise the “customer” (formerly known as “student”) will get upset.<\/p>\n

Here’s what’s wrong with the emphasis on “customer” in situations that aren’t made for consuming: The “customer model” is conducive to peer-controlled thinking. The fatal error in advocating it in journalism, politics, academia, civics — any area that used to be “controlled” by ideals and\/ or belief in authority — is that peer-controlled thinking doesn’t necessarily contribute to making those (previously authoritarian) areas more open or egalitarian, it just makes them more susceptible to peer pressure. It is reckless to think that authoritarianism could be challenged by a peer-controlled model of “the customer.”<\/p>\n

You have to ask yourself how you feel about peer pressure.<\/p>\n

Is it a good thing? Is it a liberating force? Is it a force that makes you conform?<\/p>\n

Another thing we all know, at gut-level, is that peer pressure is incredibly intimate: it gets you here, right here. And I think that somewhere in the tension between the desire for intimacy and its rejection (as a means of survival, as a means of staying distinct), we can also find some of the descriptors of why and how women participate \/ compete in this weird blogging environment. We are constantly being told that our voices are supposed to be “unique” or “individual,” while at the same time we feel the peer-pressure to be just like blah-blah [fill in the blank]. Those who manage to square that circle in their pointy little heads win first prize. How else could anyone (an A-lister man, for example) have the gall to write entries on how to be successful in blogging, for example? And how else could that same (male) voice — which isn’t really all that unique or individual or interesting, because, like all his peers, he’s following a cookie-cutter pattern for popularity — consider himself “unique” and “individual”? <\/p>\n

Sure, it’s more comfortable to talk about “customers” instead of “authority,” but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get around the latter. If you’re a parent, ask yourself how having kids-as-customers makes you feel. Perhaps — if you’re really modern — you’re already nearly completely there, or should I say: nearly nowhwere, as in: non-existant as a parent. C’mon, ‘fess up: aren’t you merely a content-provider to your kid’s needs? Isn’t your kid just a customer of your services? Yeah, that’s right. That’s where we’re going. Your kid has been in a peer-controlled environment ever since s\/he entered school, which is why you’re feeling superfluous, too. So get on down, join your kid on the floor.<\/p>\n

See? It’s uncomfortable when you really think about it, isn’t it? You have no real authority in your life or in your dealings with anyone, your kid knows that, and that is the way of customers: it’s a total peer-universe. <\/p>\n

Frankly, I find it a bit creepy. I am a woman of a certain age who has sacrificed (yeeuw!, what an old-fashioned word!) a lot in the name of a certain project (parenthood), which, as far as she can tell entails the transmission of countless details of wisdom, insight, experience, tradition, and even a certain professional parental “je ne sais quois,” and I’ll be damned if I’m joining my kid on the floor for just any old reason. I want some distinction, some power of discrimination, between my life as a customer, my life as a sexual woman, and my life as a citizen or parent or teacher (authority figure). For example, I won’t ever be a customer of my husband’s sexual services (or vice versa). (That’s another thing Kant got wrong, by the way. And since Kant said something to that effect, you can see that the logic [of the market] is inherent in the whole rationalist project, can’t you?)<\/p>\n

In whose interest is it that you should be a customer? That’s what you have to ask yourself. There are areas in life where it doesn’t make any sense to think of yourself as one. Even though it’s terribly uncool, it might be a better bet to think in other ways about authority. In terms of your own dignity, for starters. This is where we women have an historical insight, because we’ve traditionally been subjected to authority. Today, the logic of the market is the highest authority in the western world, with the ability to liberate as well as enslave. Perhaps the enslaving aspect of the logic of the market is going to succeed in levelling every single human activity to one common denominator (“customer”), but just for now, I don’t want a journalism that treats me as a customer –I’m a reader and a citizen. I want to fight to keep some areas of public or civic life (or sexual life, for that matter) distinct from market logic. <\/p>\n

Remember that, Mrs. Shopper, next time you’re out there shopping (cue Monty Python). The Market wants you, but remember, too, that Mrs. Shopper is a man in drag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is something I wrote in response to a bunch of posts at Shelley‘s, which I first thought I’d post as a comment here, or maybe here but when it got longer and longer, seemed too overbearing for a comments board. But please, read these entries at Burningbird if you haven’t already. This topic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}