A year ago I wrote in Blog de Viajes, the spanish version of this blog: “few affirmations on the academic field cause as much fun to a traveller as that one that says that borders are becoming less important. Apparently, state nations are decaying, and their borders with them which should become more permeable. But none of this happens when we travel. Getting close to borderlines is always a complicated process, marked by the inspection of our passports, the intent to trick us with the money exchange rate, the entrance to a new environment. When he moves, the traveller discovers that borderlines are not agonyzing symbols of an once-upon-a-time world, instead, they’re perfectly healthy and they still articulate particular practices for local people and foreigners”.

When I read again this post, I stopped to think how in fact the text reflects my uncomfortability with sensationalist affirmations, colorful, but unrealistic, in the end. There are several labels that fit into this category: the no-places, the end of modern era, the dissappearing borders, the simulacrum, the farewell to reality and welcome to virtuality.

The main reason of my annoyance is how little these “sensationalist” affirmations tell us about our practices, mostly if they’re strongly localized. It’s possible that our eveyday life is every time more aesthetizied, symbolized, semiotized. But, when this make us forget the referent, the material support, then things are not well stated.

The subject borders decadence fits into this context. Borderline crossing usually is a whole source of discoverings and dangers. More than mere formalisms, we find that these limits articulate a good part of material practices of the social actors of the zone. That they take advantage of the money exchange, of smuggling, of the passing through of tourists, to survive economically.

The uncertainty of the traveller facing the borderline, one can not stop looking with certain eskepticism the borders decadence theme, the overwhelming global advance.
The circulation of products is becoming freer, but people have every time more barriers to freely move, particularly from undeveloped countries to wealthier ones. And while some european countries are discussing the possibility of creating real concentration camps in the north of Africa, others still are strangers to the relations between limits, borders and material practices.

One thing: there’s nothing wrong with the little stamp on the passport. Did you notice how important it is, as a personal asset for the traveller, the growing existence of admission and exit stamps on their passports? I think this could make a good post in the future.

For a long time, social and cultural consequences of the extension of the automobile were not priorized as an object of study by social sciences. Recently, with the consolidation of what’s usually known as mobilities studies, a series of works about the culture of the automobile are starting to appear. A good entry on the subjec is the number of Theory, Culture and Society dedicated to the topic of automobilities.

Why is the automobile a central part of modern mobilities? First, its importance is such that distinct orders of production organization, such as fordism and toyotism, take its name from cars factories. In these places, a particular form of production, linked to the production line and flexible production, started to be defined and is showing in a good part of literature on economics and innovation.

Second, the massive introduction of the automobile estimulated and gave sense to a space reformulation of the city and the appearing of suburbs and commercial centers, far away from the most populate urban centers. It remodeled our everyday life to the point that it is impossible to think of how our society would be without its presence. But, at the same time, the culture of the automobile establishes a series of rules on its own, that tend to be accepted as natural by other sectors of the society. For instance, the tolerance in respect to the development of cars that can reach very high speeds, where the odds of a fatal accident -as much for the driver as for eventual pedestrian- are really high.

On the other side, even when the culture of the automobile can be seen at this extent as a global fenomenum, it’s pretty obvious for any traveler that the forms of managing and ordering the traffic differ a lot in different countries. Even the place of the car in our quotidian life is distinct in each society. It’s evident its huge weight on the estructure of the movement of the american society. The idea of the drive-thru, the auto Mac and other types of business that reformulate its practices of customer care to adequate the use of the automobile, is putting on the spotlight this importance. The vast popularity of the automobile as a means of locomotion ends up having an impact on the american society in another way: its stimulation to sedentarism and the growth of the number of obese people.

To focalize the culture of the automobile as an object of study for social sciences also implies to place it in a particular net, in which shopping centers, suburban spaces, hotels and lodges, and tourist locations also participate.

Bibliography

Featherstone, Mike (2004) “Automobilities: an introduction� en Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 21 num. 4/5.

A few days ago I wrote an entry on the subject of thesis and working papers. I begun with a text written by Alejandro Piscitelli in the blog of the Catedra de Procesamiento de Datos from the Communication Sciences career at the University of Buenos Aires (in spanish), in which some strategies of how to put together a thesis were commented.

But not only Piscitelli’s text grabbed my attention. In the entry, there’s a large series of comments that, instead of analyzing the entry, they ask for help:

HI I’M FROM BOLIVIA, I HAVE TO ELABORATE A WORKING PAPER FOR LAW SCHOOL, ABOUT RESEARCH TECHNIQUES, I’D LIKE TO GET SOME HELP WITH THE TOPIC, BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS I DON’T KNOW WHAT SUBJECT TO TALK ABOUT, THANK YOU.
Published by: CLAUDIA, November 18, 2003 at 04:41 PM

As you can see, a comment like this makes very little sense in the web. In the first place, it’s almost impossible to have someone help you put together your thesis if you give such few precisions. At least, you have to define the object of study, hypothesis or questions that guide the research, etc. This can’t be done by anyone but the researcher/thesist. To make this work is a really long, complex process. It’s very unlikely that somebody else is going to do it for you.

But, in the second place, the most important matter is somewhere else. In the web, knowledge is built in a public and coolaborative manner. That is, with the active participation of a group of people that not only help themselves in a philantropic way, but also give each other a hand to accomplish common goals. To write a comment in a blog and sit around waiting for someone to send you an email with the requested help to build a thesis is something that just makes no sense within this model of knowledge construction. In the same way a blog gains interest when the blogger and his readers colaborate actively (something I talked about in a previous post on Vida Vacia 4.0) the creation of knowledge is not something made by an only person, but by a community.

For this reason, if you’re really interested in participating in active discussions concerning subjects of study, research and thesis objects, in the phorum or blog that you want, its very unlikely that someone will help you out if, on one hand, you don’t give accurate information about your project and, on the other hand, you don’t participate in this community colaborating with the rest in common goals.

But this active attitude, that rejects the usual forms of passive reception of knowledge, seems hard to assume by a significant number of net users. For example, in this entry of Nanotechnology, a relevant number of people, instead of commenting on the text, dedicate their time to leave texts like this one:

TRINO:
Please, I’d like to get the latest news on nanotecnology, the fields where it’s being currently applied to, and the way it can modify man’s life, its benefits as well as secondary effects to which we’re exposed.
thanks,
12/02/2004 16:01:08 email: ocampo_jt(arroba)hotmail.com

The topic reach such proportions that the author of Nanotechnology dedicated a post to the subject of in his other blog in spanish, Loogic, where he unloads his opinions on this ‘comfortable’ users. And very honestly, he states: “What do they think? that I’m gonna spend my whole day sending emails, dedicating to recopilate ALL of the information in the world about nanotechnology and send it URGENTLY TO THEIR EMAILS?”

I believe we have a long way to go in subject of educating net users, as teaching them how to use the net as a knowledge tool. It’s worthless to leave a comment in a blog begging for help; we have to assume the role of searching for the information, then publish it and encourage the rest of users to collaborate with our venture. It’s not a quick process, of course. If what we need is urgent information, then we better look it up on our own. But if what we’re looking for is to broader our work in a long term, sharing our knowledge with others can be a strategy to obtain more research resources.

A long time ago, we talked about the problems of establishing, in analytical terms, clear differences between tourists and backpackers/travelers. In his article, Backpacker types, which can be downloaded here, Camille O’Reilly tries to define a taxonomy of the backpacker. She begins by analyzing the problem from a point of vew we already know: that the limits that separate “traditional” tourists from “backpackers” is quite unaccurate. Still, some countries make efforts to separate them from an statistical point of view. For instance, Australia defines a backpacker as anyone who spends the night in a lodge. Even when it is statistically useful, such information only defines as central one of the backpacker’s practices, the use of economic lodges. But it doesn’t use any other relevant indicator to stablish the difference between both categories. The most traditional, which states that the traditional tourist spends more money at the place he’s visiting than a backpacker does, has been questioned by economists long ago (in spanish).

O’Reilly proposes two other practices to be considered as relevant when establishing the distinction between tourist and backpacker: the number of days of the travel -usually larger in the case of the backpacker- and the means of transportation used, cheaper in the same case.

But, at the same time, the author adds a category that can only be defined from the agent’s point of view; the hypothesis is that the backpacker considers the trip important in itself, independently of the destination. According to O’Reilly, the backpacker’s trip, in itself, has a flexible schedule and is open to permanent change.

The author defines at least four types of backpackers: the pro (or hippie traveler); the Gap Year backpacker, who uses the end of any life period (for example, the end of his college years) to take a time off to travel; the Life Crisis backpacker, who travels out of insatisfaction for his sedentary life; and the Partyer, interested in finding beach, sun, alcohol and, eventually, drugs. A fifth category, not well defined by O’Reilly, consist of people who take short periods of vacations to travel backpacker-style to places not to far away from the place they live.

As you can see, O’Reilly’s classification still has its problems. For example, it still doesn’t treat the evident cross between the representation of the tourist and the traveler/backpacker -which become evident in the partyer. Nevertheless, I like the idea of valuating the trip as much as the destination itself; it’s an idealized image of the backpacker, but it can be a good starting point to analyze the imaginarium and common senses that inform this representation.

There’s a huge scandal going on in Peru about some video being shown during Lan airlines -of chilean capital- flights. You can see a capture of these videos at this page of the Lima newspaper La Republica. I don’t see what the big deal is, while it’s true that some images don’t leave Lima looking at its best, the images belong to an old Lonely Planet -actually known as Globetrekker- episode. At least, that’s what I think, I will take a look to the video later.

In the show, filmed in the 90s, the peruvian capital seems quite dirty and chaotic, a situation that has improved considerably in the latest years. While the traffic is still complicated, it’s less wild than some years ago.

Of course, some peruvian polititians say that these images, considered as “denigrant”, were shown on purpose by Lan. To me, it seems only a matter of business: Lan bought the videos package that, for being so old, came cheaper. Besides, this show has repeatedly been shown in cable television and nothing happened. It’s clear, anyways, that it wasn’t appropiate to show it during a flight to Peru; but that only speaks about how bad Lan selects their in flight video material and doesn’t prove a conspiration attempt to give Peru a bad reputation.

By the way, this scandal explains itself for historic reasons. There are old issues between Peru and Chile, recently brought up by an incident in Cuzco, when a chilean citizen damaged historic Inca monuments. Obviously, this video came out in a very bad timing. But one thing is to be amateur and another conspiring.

The note by La Republica about the topic can be found here. I will check the link tomorrow because this newspaper has the awful habit of changing links from one day to the next one.

Update: I just saw the episode again. It was made in 1997, when the show was called Lonely Planet -today is known as Globetrekker. One has to admit that what they portray about Lima does nothing to favor this city, which seems dirty and careless. But the rest of the destinations, particularly Cuzco and Puno, appear in a pretty positive way. The program is no big deal: Iquitos, for example, only appears because there’s forest, but from the city there isn’t a single take -and the amazonica night life is famous for its vitality. There aren’t either many references to the wonderful peruvian food, except for a few street vendors who sell boiled corn and grilled pork meat.

Again, the big problem is the obvious mistake of Lan by showing this video, with all the history of resentment existing between Peru and Chile. The topic is still covered today in a note of La Republica, where they refer to a “pseudocumentary” that aggravates Peru. It seems to me that they’re overreacting, since the only city in the video shown in an unfavorable way is Lima. Anyways, is not new that many touristic products made for the american and european market usually portrays Latin America in a very derogatory manner, as you can see in the case of Argentina guides analyzed by Cecilia Palacios in her graduate thesis (in spanish only). But in this case one can’t miss the fact that this scandal is also explained by a matter of intern politics from Peru as well as its relations with Chile. More than a touristic problem here, we have a problem of nationalism.

There’s a very particular type of backpackers and travelers. They’re the ones that, taking as an example the people from my country, venture to travel through Latin America with very little money and do nothing but complain. “Everything sucks”. Trains are ugly, people smell, the beer is served warm or tastes bad, hotels are in ruins, the roads are a disaster, etc. The complain list is absolutely unending. Chances are, more than one of us might have crossed our path with one of these specimens. I had my own share. And when they happened to be argentineans -honestly, I couldn’t help to feel ashamed of my people- I ran away like they were the pest. Sometimes I just wanted to tell them “if you hate all of this so much, why didn’t you just take a damn first class Air France trip to Paris?” Of course, they might answer they cannot afford it. Then, guys, don’t complain, stay home watching Videomatch (a popular local tv show in Argentina). They travel cheap and they protest as if they were paying a fortune.

It’s not about being intolerant with criticism, but to stay firm and not to cede to certain ‘common senses’ that naturalize racism. These are those who put their town or their country -doesn’t matter where it is- as the parameter from ‘normality’ is measured. There’s nothing more ridiculous than someone who travels only to confirm what he already knows: that the place he lives at is better, that common sense is property of his people, that certain things “wouldn’t happen in his country”.

Do the rest of the travelers and backpackers of the world a favor and stay home. You will not disturb anyone if you stay home watching TV.

There are several periods in the history of the humanity that really fascinate me. One of them is the heresy of medieval times, in particular those of the text the cataros and the heresy of the Free Spirit. Ever since I read Pursuit of the millenium, by Norman Cohn, I haven’t been able to lose interest for these religious streams that maintain a radical speech against the Catholic Church, and have been torn apart by the Inquisition. What is an entry about religious heresy doing in a blog about communication, travel and tourism? Further, I will explain myself.

Because of this interest, a few weeks ago I bough The Cathars. The perfect heresy, by Stephen O’Shea. Since I’m no specialist in the subject or history -only an amateur fan- I cannot make judgements on the historygraphic quality of the work. But you can notice the hand of a journalist behind it; the book is written in a very agile, simple and, at the same time, full of data, manner. Even when there’s plenty simplifycation of the historic period -it’s a not so extense, 250 pages book- it’s quite instructive.

For those who know nothing about the topic, the cataros -or albigenses- were a heresic sect that merged in the south of France, and reached its peak towards the XIII century. In a very tolerant climate they developed in a very important manner, until they drew the attention of Rome and local feudals, who launched several campaigns against them until completely dissappearing the heresy. Its speech was totally opposite to that of the Catholic Church. They considered the Earth as the real Hell, and believed that at the time of their death, if they followed a life apart from mundane vices, we would earn our way to heaven. To put it simply: all the authorities that govern the Earth were by defect allies of the evil, which included, of course, the Pope.

Today, we would most likely look at the cataros from a freedom of expression point of view rather than an religious approximation. The brutality of freedom of thinking repression in the south of France, at that period, reached horrible dimensions. At Béziers, for example, more than 20 thousand people were beheaded, just to make sure there wouldn’t be any more cataros left. “Kill them all. God will recognize his children” is the phrase the priest that led the attack, Arnaud Amaury, had used. Although, there is no consensus on wether the phrase was actually pronounced or not.

To my surprise, I found at the end of the book, O’Shea’s words on the touristic exploitation of the cataro myth. Completely dissappeared after the brutal military campaign held by the Catholic Church, only memories and representations of these religious dissidents are left. Many political european movements have retrieved the figure, from the anarchists to the nazi -yes, it’s hard to understand, but it was. In a way, the cataros are a sort of empty significant, that can be filled with anything: free thinking, anarchism, faith, resistence, rebellion.

And, of course, the cataros have been generously exploited by tourist agents who detected a growing number of people interested in knowing more about this movement and the place they lived at. Even when the castles and homes of the cataros were distroyed, it is still possible to visit the locations were the events took place. For example, at the official website of Carcasona, one of the most important zones in the diffusion of catarism, there’s an invitation to visit some locations quite relevant to the cataro country, such as Monsetgur. And in this site, you can find the description of a tour to visit all the locations of the zone. O’Shea describes even the restaurants and casinos show the name “cataro”. Its presence in the ara becomes a constant, a whole paradox if you consider it a religious movement that dissappeared completely, without leaving any monuments or artistic expressions.

Obviously, the narrative of tourism tends to magnify the capacities of catarism, which in its absence seems to have won the battle: its figure, from the distance, looks perfect, fair, abnegated, in front of the prepotency of its enemy. Which isn’t new: in America, many legends and stories highlight the role of the accomplishments of indian tribes, although unfortunately this came too late to save them.

There’s a good number of interesting resources to the topic of cataro tourism. For example, here, here, and here, and the long article dedicated in the Wikipedia.

As fascinating as it can seem the story of the catara heresy, take your distance from praising speeches you might find at many touristic website. Remember, at this time of history, it’s not a matter of faith, but mere marketing.

For the last seven years, I’ve been working as a teacher at the Communication Sciences Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires. Along this time, we’ve always worked under bad conditions, crowded classrooms, poorly ventilated, extremely hot during summer season, and with minimum support -sometimes it’s hard to get a television to show a video to the class; forget about haven a slides projector.

But I would like to focus this entry on a specific problem: undergraduates working papers. Basically, it’s an academic work that students have to make in order to obtain their Social Communications Graduate title. Unfortunately, the career doesn’t give many elements to fulfill this paper. The methodological subjects are poor and most of the students finish without being able to build a work project that contains key elements, such as a theoric frame, hypothesis, etc. This way, it’s usually in hands of thesis directors the ability to help them cover these methodological bumps. I was a student once, and I also arrived to this instance in similar conditions, so I know the topic.

Besides, the Communications major has a large number of students, and the potential number of thesists grows while the number of students remains constant. The result is obvious: it becomes every time more difficult to find teachers willing to direct these working papers and more and more students find themselves cruelly dissappointed and discouraged when facing their final work. The situation is complex and it’s getting more serious with time. Despite the fact that the authorities are aware of the problem, it’s very complicated to actually fix it.
In my case, I have a Communication and Travel seminary, and most of the thesis I direct focus on this matter. I have somewhere between 20 to 30 students every year and, ususally, my thesists come from this seminary. But it’s obvious that I can’t direct them all. Even less when I’m working on my own Master Program thesis, which I’ve delayed considerably. How many thesist can a teacher direct every year? Two? Four? Six? The truth is, usually most of the teachers I know in this career, and take the thesis matter seriously, hold no more than four or five thesist simultaneously.

In the Communication field, titular teachers, adjunct teachers, associate teachers, and teaching assistants can direct students thesis. Facing the growth of the number of potential thesists, the subject leaks even more to the basis of the academic structure and those who are in charge of the practices, grade tests, etc.

It would be ridiculous to believe that the problem with thesis and working papers limits to the Communications field at the UBA. Long ago, Alejandro Piscitelly wrote an excellent entry on this subject (in spanish). The comments show that the problem has widely spread. Rather than discussing Piscitelli’s theoric and epistemologic positions, the comments are a desperate cry for help:

“I want to write a thesis about cosmiatrics, would someone tell me, more or less, where should I start?
Published by: mºjose on April 20, 2004 06:34 AM”

We can know a lot about methodology, but thesis only progress, as Piscitelly puts it, in one way: by making them. But it’s hard to jump start it if we don’t find a director to guide our work. No one is going to tell you online how to start. At most, you could find in the net thesis on similar subjects, or advices on methodology, but very unlikely you’ll find the answer to ‘how to begin’ to build your work. The Internet can help you find people who are working in the same topic, so you can contact them through e-mails, and also find new bibliography. But it will not give you a solution on how to put together a work that results, mostly, from the interaction of students and teachers, and a long exchange of ideas.

Of course, the methodological and theoric discussion on thesis and working papers could go further. But at least in the environment I work at, what’s urgent always beats what’s important, as Quino used to say through his Mafalda character. On one hand, we can never end the discussion on a reform for the Communications studies program. On the other hand, it’s hard to put into practice a proposal to fix the problem with thesists when there are not enough teachers to direct them. Which, in the long term, will turn into a questioning of the validity of the thesis or paper, at least within a career that cannot guarantee enough resources for its production.

One thing, do not turn the comments on this entry into a “frankenstein” where a bunch of people beg for help on their papers, instead of truly discussing the real topic. If you want to know what I mean by “Frankenstein”, take a look into this great entry at Denker Uber (in spanish).

Airlines and regulatory organisms in the US and european airflights sector are discussing the possibility of eliminating the current prohibition of using mobile phones during a flight. Currently, the use of mobile phone is not allowed during flights because it would affect the aircraft’s communication. Now, a survey made by the United States Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) found that most of the passengers prefer the prohibition to go on, but this time not to be disturbed during the flight. Apparently, not everyone cares about the “freedom of always being communicated”.

Obviously, airlines are putting a lot of money to make aircrafts handle several standards of wireless communication, and the prohibition will be eliminated to allow the sale of more added value services. And quite possibly we will begin to see this during the next year (originally seen in Globalivity. The original note can be found at PCW Interactive).