Hmmm, a weblog is much more fun than I thought it would be.
I don't know how it works but bit by bit I'm getting there.

Anyway, for everyone who's interested in playing a sport that's a little bit different than the usual sports like, Hockey or Volleyball or whatever, there is the opportunity to get a little bit more acquainted with this sport TONIGHT. It's a little bit short notice but that's because I just got the idea to put in on my Weblog. But you can join anytime actually so it's not just for tonight.

It's at Olympos (yes, you can play rugby at the University) at 18.30.
For more info see the website:

A critical question to the article of L. Küng – Shankleman

Question: Kung says in her article “Strong ‘successful’ cultures can therefore be a liability as well as an asset.” Do you agree with this statement?

Answer:  Kung explains her statement by referring to the statement of Schein. Schein says basically that the successful cultures are based on past successes which are taken more or less for granted. Kung agrees on this point by saying that a organisation won’t ‘spontaneously examine or challenge the assumptions on which the culture is built.” I agree on that point, it’s a human thing to always neglect the good things, and only pay attention to the things that aren’t successful. So when a organisation comes to the point that the culture isn’t that successful anymore because it simply isn’t static although it is difficult to change, they probably won’t be able to change it because the organisation didn’t pay any attention to it before. So when a culture is successful it is an asset merely because of this almost static posture. On the other hand when the environment changes, the assumption can change and thus the culture can change. This is the point that a culture can also be a liability, which they shouldn’t take for granted.  My conclusion is that I agree with kung on her point.

 

A critical question to the article of M. de Mooij

Question: De Mooij says in his article “For people concerned with global marketing and communication, the most important aspect of culture is that it influences our perception – our own culture drives how we communicate and what we communicate.” Do you agree that it is the most important aspect?

Answer: I agree that communication is a very important aspect of a culture but it is probably wise to bring in some distinction. I mean, on what kind of argument is his statement based. This is merely my overall critique on this article. The author makes more assumptions that aren’t really based on anything, accept from his own “logical thinking”. Based on my own logical thinking I would say that things like our own nurture and nature drives us too and not just our culture. It’s true that our culture influences us but only partly. De Mooij also says that the model of Hofstede concerning five dimensions for comparing work-related values is proved to be very suitable for comparing cultures with respect to consumption-related values. The author says he has two arguments who will validate his decision. A, because he did his own content analysis and B because he compared the model of Hofstede with a big European Survey. The author elaborates on his second argument but doesn’t really elaborate on his first argument which, is rather important I think. His article is merely based on this model. So I think it is important to explain in which way he proves the model of Hofstede suitable for his own statements.

 

A critical question to the article of Sean Nixon

Question: Nixon says in his article “ The most immediately striking value of much of the social and cultural historical work on consumer culture and the consumer economy is its direct challenge to the narrow contemporary focus of the sociological accounts that I have been discussing.” Why?

Answer: Most books focuses on the present consumer culture. They don’t really take the history into consideration. The Birth of a Consumer Society is a book that has had an enduring impact on the historiography of consumption and which has been seminal in relativising contemporary-focused accounts of the consumer economy. Nixon says that the argument which is used by McKendrick et al is driven by the ambition to revise and interrupt established debates within economy history about the take-off of the industrial revolution in Britain. If the author only focuses on present consumer culture, it would indeed give a narrow view of the consumer culture in general.

 

A critical Question to the Article of Angela McRobbie

Question: Do you agree with the statement that the rise of creative work especially for young people can indeed be seen as a strategy for reducing unemployment?

Answer: Yes, to a certain degree. Creative job are mot often jobs like being a painter, a designer, a photographer. It is a job that doesn’t really give you any substantial reason for making money but hey at least you’be got a job. McRobbie also says in her article that a lot of young people don’t really give any attention to the fact that they have to make long hours of work, don’t get paid well and have volatile and unpredictable patterns of work. I agree with McRobbie that it I more a job without capital than a  capital without jobs.

A critical question to the article of Hutchby.

 

Question: Hutchby says in his article that different technologies posses different affordances, and that these affordances constrain the ways in which they can be read. Do you agree?

Answer: I agree with Hutchby. The way he explains affordances is based on the theory of Gibson (1979). The affordance that a stone has on an reptile is that it provides shelter for the reptile. Looking at the example Hutchby himself gives on the possible interpretations of an aeroplane and a bridge, you can say that these interpretations, the way in which we read these things, are constraint. A bridge has the affordance that is gives people away to walk over the water without paying money for it. A plane gives the affordance to bring people from one country to another for a lot of money. The affordances aren’t similar and that is why the interpretations are constraint.

 

A critical question to the article of Dodge and Kitchin

 

Question:In the article there’s a quote about Rheingold and others saying that “cyberspace enables individuals to circumvent the geographical constraints of the material world, allowing people to shape their own communities by providing choices such as who they interact with.” Do you agree?

Answer: Yes I agree, there are no rules or obligations in cyberspace. Not such as there are in real life, that is in geographical communities. First of all you can be who you want to be, you can pretend to be anyone you like and in addition you can communicate with whom you like. You can choose everything. In that way there aren’t really constraints to the virtual cyberspace communities. It’s like Anderson says “ All communities are imagined, and so long as members share a common imaginative sctructure, a community can be said to exist.”

Three Critical Questions to the Article of Vogel

1 How can the article of Vogel be placed in the course of Participatory Culture?

Answer: the course participatory culture examines particular examples of social participation stimulated by commercial corporations for reasons of promotion and profit, enabled by computer networks, and given form by various members of the public. The article of Vogel sketched the economical landscape in which all entertainment industries operate. In his article Vogel points out how hour at work, productivity trends, expected utility functions, demographics, and other factors can affect the amounts of time and money we spend on leisure-related goods and services. The article has in that way everything to do with participating culture. In order for various members of the public to be able to participate they have to have their time, that is to say, their leisure time to participate. It’s interesting to know how the expansion of leisure time developed during the year and what the influence of the entertainment industries was on this expansion.

 

 

2 Vogel says in his article on page 10  “Thus, long-term growth in leisure time related industries depends on the rate of technological development throughout the economy.” Do you agree with this statement?

Answer: I agree with Vogel on the one hand, when he says that the technological advances which are embodied in the new capital equipment, guarantees a bigger production in less time by fewer workers. But it isn’t necessarily logical that the amount of leisure time grows too. The quantity of the produced goods increases but that doesn’t imply that the duration of the time that people work decreases. On that point I think he should make a distinction.

 

3 How does Vogel explain the broad demographic changes most important to entertainment industry?

Answer: Vogel gives three explanations. First of all the projected increase of the numbers of 18-34-year-olds in the early 2000s. Second of all, the projected rapid growth in the large group of 35-to-64-year-olds and last the significant expansion of the population over age 65.

Three Critical Questions to the Article of Castronova

 

1 How can the article of Castronova be placed in the course of Participatory culture?

The article is about the unique features of economies in virtual worlds, that is in a game world. These virtual worlds gives humans the chance to escape from their own worlds (on earth…). Castronova says that the demand for game time has increased since the immersive satisfaction available from gaming technology has increased. The satisfaction comes from the confronted and overcomed challenges, that are provided by games. Games are a part of the participating culture, it is an example of a social participation encouraged by commercial corporations. In that way it is interesting to know something about the gaming-culture in order to attribute some explanation to the participatory culture.

 

2 What reasons does Castronova give for the game-market not likely being monopolised?

First, there seems to be a great diversity of tastes for the different features of a world. No company alone could provide all these sorts of world images. The second reason involves congestion. All the aspects on a game are depending on some congestion, whether they like it or not. When some content is really entertaining it will always be in some way obstructed by congestion, coming from connection speeds and bandwidth. To reduce this congestion more labour has to be made. The third reason can be found in the many competitive strategies that are available. When you’re playing a game, and you already reached several levels, it isn’t likely you will stop playing that game to start another game where you have to start from scratch again. The final reason is the nature of the content itself. If a new and “better” game is designed, it is likely that it will attract (other) players.

 

3 What are the impacts of Virtual Economies according to Castronova?

The first impact is that current national income and product accounts do not place any value on online assets. In virtual worlds these assets belong to no nation. Therefore will a migration of value creation from earth economies to virtual economies appear as a decline in standard measures of economy activities. A second impact involves the demographic structure of the transition. The final impact involves the fiscal health of Earth governments. When you bring taxable assets into the virtual world you also have to bring in Earth jurisdictions.

A critical question to the article of Don Slater:

Is it true considering Slaters argument that cultural and economic action in markets and market relations can never be meaningfully be seperated out, that that is enough to capture the customer?

Answer: On meso-economic  and meso-cultural level this can be considered to be true because the cultural components and the conomical theory is comprehendible. Logically, the statement of Slater will not be true on the macro-economic and macro-cultural level, precisely for the reason that the cultural components ate to big to comprehend. You can’t take all the cultural components from every country in which you want to sell your product into consideration. In that way should Slater make a distinction in his arguement.

A Critical Queston to the article of John Allen.

Allen states that both culture and economy run together in all economic sectors, combining in different strenghts the abstract, the expressive, the affective and the aesthetic, making each distinctive while not making any combination, such as the material and the symbolic, exclusive to any one sector. Do you agree?

Answer: I agree with the statement of Allen. First of all like Slater says in his article about caputering the customer, cultural and economic processes are interdepended on one and another, they are fused. This counts for every sort of industrie wether it contains a  business industrie or the filmindustrie. The symbolic notifications are the same. The producers make an analyses on forehand based on economical theory and cultural components. Like Allen points out on page 47 “Different industries and the economic activities therein, play across a variety of symbolic registers – abstract, expressive, affective and aesthetic – and combine them in ways which stress certain kinds of symbolic usage at the expense of others”.

This is actually a test just to see how it works.