I’m a social construct, get me out of here!
I recently heard an anecdote (ascribed to the film ‘What the blip do we know’) that really intrigued me. Apparently, when the first European ships appeared off the coasts of the New World, the majority of Native Americans could not see them. By that I mean they could not perceive them, or distinguish them as shapes sitting on the horizon. They had never seen an object with that particular shape. There were no compatible matches in the data bank of imagery that created their visual consciousness. The template for visual image: “Spanish Galleon” was missing and, since there were no memories of such an image, they simply could not see them. Apparently, there was one shaman who could perceive the ships and was able to instruct others to also see them.
This story may be a modern myth. But myth or not, I had a comparable experience many years ago when I was walking in the Scottish Highlands. My friend, who was a local and was accompanying me on my hike, suddenly stopped in his tracks and asked me in a hushed tone if I could see them. ‘See who?’ I thought to myself; all I could see was the other side of the glen covered in brown heather. Suddenly the whole landscape came to life and to my amazement I saw that there was a herd of deer directly in my line of vision. Startled by our presence, they had begun to run and only then was I able to distinguish them from the landscape.
Both these experiences relate to our ability to pay attention to things. We as designers have a unique ability to notice objects, trends or ideas that others cannot immediately perceive. It’s a kind of radar; constantly scanning the world around us, picking up the on the latest thing - whatever that may be. I’m not precisely sure how this works, but it does. I had an inkling that jeans were ‘out’, two years before anyone in Levi Strauss & Co noticed a downward trend in the sales of their jeans. Late one September, and at the start of a new year at college, I observed that none of the students in my seminar group were wearing jeans. The green of army cargo pants was dominating the room. I could draw up a long list of these: starting with boxer shorts (when I was a student); to thongs that stuck out of the back of women’s trousers; 1950s retro stilettos; cowboy boots, etc.
Attention, is one of the underlying forces that maintains the status quo in our contemporary culture. Its role and function is to create and maintain our sense of self.
…However erroneous that may be (this is not my observation, I refer to - and recommend - the reader Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality the Sufi Way
Recently, in one of my more elevated moments I caught myself leafing through a copy of Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste’. (To those of you reaching for pen and paper in order to refer me to UK Private Eye’s Pseud’s Corner, I’m way ahead of you. As an act of contrition for having such pretensions, I have already hit myself in the face with a big apple pie.) - A book that, according to the excellent Wikipedia, was voted “one of the 20th century’s 10 most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association”. Bourdieu’s hypothesis asserts that members of various social systems (for instance graphic design and by implication the consumers of graphic design) struggle in order to pursue desirable resource and in doing so contrive to acquire and obtain Social Capital. That is, Social Capital being an “aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition”.
Bourdieu, being the French intellectual that he was, demonstrated his idea by using JS Bach’s ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ as an example of how certain fields (a field is a social arena in which people manoeuvre in order to obtain resources – in contrast to a social class) recognize and reflect a sense of status by reproducing artistic tastes. This is despite the apparent freedom of choice. For instance, if you are from a particular background - i.e. 1970s French intellectual - you would pick up on certain nuances. Therefore, your tastes would veer towards JS Bach as oppose to Dalida (the pioneer of French disco music – my advice is don’t even go there).
If that is the case, it has implications for us as designers. How much of what accounts for our sense of taste is the consequence of a mere social construct? And how do we feed back into social constructs? Most significantly, by directing attention in a certain direction, are we necessarily acting as agents of change (for the better)?
Maziar Raein
“I observed that none of the students in my seminar group were wearing jeans. The green of army cargo pants was dominating the room. I could draw up a long list of these: starting with boxer shorts (when I was a student); to thongs that stuck out of the back of women’s trousers; 1950s retro stilettos; cowboy boots, etc.”
Mr Raein, you seem to suffer the same as the Native American myth: you can’t distinguish anything above the horizon?
/Sylvia 01/03/2006