Costelloe-KuehnMemo4

MEMO: QUESTIONING A TEXT: Advocacy After Bhopal

What modes of inquiry were used to produce it? How is the text structured and performed? How can it circulate?**
 * What is the text “about” -- empirically and conceptually?


 * __What is the text about – empirically?__**

What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and politicaleconomic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture-technology- economics?
 * Globalization / the New World Order / Neoliberalism
 * The "management" and "settlement" of disaster by a transnational corporation and multiple nation-states
 * Conventional notions of "advocacy" are unsettled.

Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy?
 * "Its" location in both time and space is multiple
 * She explicitly writes that different people and groups point to different origin stories that explain "Bhopal."
 * The book is largely a work of unsettlement, dislocation, disorientation. Union Carbide attempted to situate "Bhopal" as an "event" that happened in a five minute span when a single disgruntled employee sabotaged the plant. "The Phenomenon" could be located in the plant, the immediate neighborhood, India, the U.S., etc., but to really understand how Bhopal "happened" (and where accountability could be placed) it is necessary to see expansively the open and complex global system (the "ground" that made the "figure" of disaster more likely to happen).
 * "Geographical contiguity could not... delimit relevance" (9).

What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount?
 * Rather than put forth a set chronology of "what happened," the author writes about how various "enunciatory communities" (or advocacy groups?) framed the situation. Political and economic forces over the role of specific "individuals."
 * The way the book is set up, however, we are led to believe that Union Carbide's story emphasizing 5 minutes and one individual should be discounted.
 * Leaders in India's government were "courting" with "foreign investment."
 * The author arrived in India at a time when the grassroots environmental movement was beginning to emerge.

What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale?
 * The nano level is emphasized explicitly when the author writes about how writing in multiple "languages" (legal, mediagenic, etc.) was a necessary form of expertise required by advocates.
 * The macro and nano scales blur when the emergent "New World Order" is the focus of analysis. Is the dominant "discourse" and the laws, material practices, technologies, and bodies in which it is inscribed on the macro level? To the degree that it a label for the defining global geo-politico-economic "order" it is hard to picture a bigger scale, yet it often traced through the articulations of specific individuals at a particular historicla moment.

Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example?
 * Each chapter is roughly based on the situation and orientation of an "enunciatory community": The judicial system in the U.S., Union Carbide in the U.S., Union Carbide in India, union groups and workers, India (the nation-state), residents of the gas-affected area, environmentalists, women's groups, anarchist-inspired middle-class activists, communities concerned about corporations, and green consultants.
 * The relations between these players are often marked by gross power inequalities. Their relationship is often far from face-to-face and is instead mediated through the environment.
 * The "Green Revolution" and the associated new technologies and practices changed relations between the key players by driving up the demand for toxics and rationalizing the risks.

What is the temporal frame in which players play? In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?” In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization?
 * (difference from question on "historical trajectory?")
 * "After Bhopal." The temporal frame itself is an object of contention between the various players. A primary goal of the activists Kim worked with was to show how the disaster (the "second disaster") continues to this day. This is in opposition to Carbide's "full and final" settlement.

What cultures and social structures are in play in the text?
 * There is the middle-class, anarchist-inspired activist culture, the organized women fighting for work and justice, the tension between Muslims and Hindus (exacerbated by media representations and fabrications), an almost inconveivable power differential between the most and least powerful actors at play...

What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds?
 * Writing is perhaps the primary practice described. Other practices (often involving some form of writing as well...) include stakeholder negotiations in board meetings; construction, repair and maintenance work (both union and not);
 * The first section of each chapter asks "what double binds call advocates to speak." These include respecting India's sovereignty ("standing tall before the world") vs. choosing the "best court for the job" as measured by meeting the interests of the victims and holding the parent corporation UCC accountable; calling on the state to act quickly in the interests of the victims (which, in effect, legitimizes the state further) vs. anarchist-inspired goals of smashing the state (or greatly reducing the centralization of power);

How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described?
 * Union Carbide's ads portray the message of "better living through chemistry."
 * The "science" (or "technology?) of building categories and sorting victims into them was, once set up, hard to contest. Victims were forced to buy into this system and prove their status, often involving much paperwork that was illegible to them.

What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text?
 * Technological: toxic gas, the (failed) early warning system,
 * Legal and legislative: The Indian government granting UC permission to build the plant (and what regulates where the profits go?), the decision to not hold the trial in the U.S., "India" chosen as the sole representative of the victims (by "India..." is that the impossibility of state legitimacy? who has the authority to grant the state the authority to... like the declaration of independence... a magic trick), the out of court settlement
 * Political: "India" wants foreign "investment" and the whole world (including potential investors) was watching how the Bhopal disaster would be settled. The "innovative model" developed set a politically charged precedent.
 * Cultural: The differential value placed on differently placed lives in the socio-cultural status hierarchy. Racism? Classism? Casteism?
 * Economic: Trade Liberalization, decline of labor unions

How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc?
 * Who had a "voice" at "the table" in shaping the settlement of the Bhopal disaster? "India" spoke for the victims.
 * The bureaucratic categorization of levels of victimhood and the criteria that set who would "count" as a victim made it very difficult for victims to receive compensation. Alternative systems (such as geographical zones based on standards of allowable exposure) might have worked differently.

Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes?
 * A comparison is made between India and the U.S. in order to contest UC's contention that "it can't happen here." "It" (exposure to toxins) actually does happen "here" (usually in low-income areas where citizens are relatively disempowered) shockingly frequently.

__**What is the text about – conceptually?**__

Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims?
 * The goal is largely to challenge the image of advocate (or activist) as a lone-hero driven by integrity and certainty in goals. The concept of "enunciatory communities" also questions the notion that it is easily identificable situations (instead, double binds) that call relatively homogenous groups (instead, multicplicity and diversity) into being and action.
 * An implicit question in the book is How do we respond in the face of uncertainty with always insufficient expertise?

What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both?
 * Very broad: In order to find points of leverage for building alternative futures it is crucial to "unsettle" received figures ("Bhopal" as isolated event) and explore the complex and changing open systems in which they occur and which they, in turn, shape.
 * Advocates often cultivate a complex understanding of the double-binds that they inhabit and can develop new expertise and articulations working within and among various temporally specific enunciatory communities.
 * It is both performed and rendered fairly explicit. The form of the book maps the complex situation, points to possible pressure points, and reveals the diverse knowledge, strategy, tactics of different enunciatory communities.

What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument?

How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument?
 * The "event" is expanded by showing how "it" is configured very differently by different groups. Participant observation (mostly in the form of writing in English for different audiences), interviews (long excerpts are included, relatively "raw") and textual analysis of UC statements and advertisements map out the situation from many perspectives.

How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged?
 * It could be argued that a "complex" understanding of the situation is not necessary for every group to act powerfully. If a person or group already benefits from speaking the dominant discourses (neoliberalism, for example), it may be more important to speak the powerful "key words" and engage in institutions (courts, for example) that are favorably oriented. When the motivation is as simple as "profit," double-binds may be less of an issue? Still, as the green consulting section shows, PR management

How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text?
 * Some of the material could be used to better understand the corrosions and enablements around trans-national activst networking.

__**Modes of inquiry?**__ What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text?
 * Post-structural notions of ethics (the "experience of the impossilbe") and time (the future anterior, Lacan's retroaction, anticipation, punctuation).
 * Bateson's double bind

What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability?
 * There may be an assumption that unsettlement, disorientation, interruption, etc. tends to be "better" than cohesiveness, duration, etc.
 * Resistance > power and hegemony
 * There is mention of "swerving" at the last minute, but where shall we swerve to? I think this kind of prescription is all over the book, but it is implicit and not usually too specific. There is a tendency to focus on critique and not generative "solutions."

Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant?
 * see above
 * She is more interested in interuption and surprise ("most important are the discontinuities" (13).
 * Yet the Bhopal disaster itself could be seen as an "interruption." I think this is part of the point: in the New Global Orders, disaster comes to be seen as to-be-expected. It is something to be managed, not necessarily avoided, if the cost is too high. It is the price that a few must pay for the "greater common good" of "better living through" technology, industry, development, progress, etc.

What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained?
 * participant observation is obtained by working with advocacy organizations (especially writing, translating information, etc.)
 * interviews with many groups and individuals
 * moving statistics (how many explosions and leaks?)
 * reflexive (experimental?) ethnographic work used to comment on the double-binds faced in ethnography
 * analysis of advertisements and public statements by corporations

If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews?
 * the interviewing style seems to be largely "passive," involving "getting out of the way" to let the interviewee speak, with occasional incitements to expand or clarify what the interviewer sees as key words or phrases.
 * Yet at times she also "puts words in the mouth" of interviewees: "I haven't yet understood where notions of community alliance come from: are they brought in from outside, a pragmatic outcome of local work, what?" (304). "Are you saying that..." (305).
 * From the interviews, the author tried to draw out the double binds inhabited by advocates, the factors that corrode or enable advocacy, and their understanding of what Bhopal "means."
 * Many interviews were done as an advocate, not "just" an ethnographer. Sometimes the author was not the interviewer (140-143, collected by Chouhan).

How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred?
 * The data is often presented in large chunks and left, largely, to "speak for itself." Other times the author will state explicitly what the interview is intended to be an "example" of.

How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories?
 * "Enunciatory communities" are the unit of aggregation presented by the author. This form of social assemblage is intended to highlight the internal diversity of groups and is presented in contrast with notions of "community" that assume homogeneity and certainty of "integrity."

What additional data would strengthen the text?
 * Perhaps drawing in more stories from other, similar "events" in India. i.e. the Narmada Dam.

__**Structure and performance?**__ What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project?
 * Before the introduction, the Prologue maps out a "synchronic timeline" that draws out the historical moment surrounding the Bhopal disaster that runs in parallel (on the page) with a more diachronic "summary" of the Bhopal events. This largely "empirical" prologue foreshadows an argument that surfaces implicitly after reading: the "event" of a disaster, while situated in a particular geography and temporality, can be used as a figure and focusing device for tracing out global processes and world orders.
 * Contra the traditional ethnography in which the author is written into an "arrival story" before disappearing from the text, the introduction begins to position the author as a reflexive author facing many of the same double binds as her "informants," plus the added double binds faced as an ethnographer.
 * "Advocacy" is introduced as the focusing device with which the author made sense of the "whirlwind" that was Bhopal at the time.
 * "I wanted to know if power was operating in new ways" (7).
 * "Our task is to subvert this encapsulation [and exorcision]" (8).
 * enunciatory communities and the double binds that they emerge in response to will be the focus of the analysis.

Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood?
 * The theory is, explicitly, mostly in the footnotes. It is somewhat explained, but assumes a familiarity with post-structuralist philosophy and social theory in general. Right from the start the reader encounters Derrida's complex articulation of the future anterior (note 2).
 * The following paragraph, near the end of the introduction, is reminiscent of Derrida's seminal essay "Structure, Sign, and Play"
 * "My overall goal has been to develop ways to understand the Bhopal disaster - and the complex global system that focus on the disaster brings into view - in a way that does not require that we be able to stand outside the system in order to critique it. In a way that takes responsibility for questioning key concepts without losing sight of the importance of work done through and in the name of such conceptps. In a way that catalyzes progressive advocacy, while recognizing faults in the system within which progressive advocacy has been built" (22).
 * But the theory is also weaved in with the empirical material and focuses the questions that the author pays particular attention to. Given the author's affinity for the work of philosophers like Derrida, it is no surprise that she is interested in developing new conceptual tools for thinking about complexity and the internal heterogeneity of advocacy groups.

What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided?
 * The binary "advocacy" vs. "status quo" is avoided. We often think of advocacy (and activism) as the strategical action of oppressed groups. Instead, the author treats all the players in the game as advocates. Putting an unexpected group (i.e. UCC) in this category (advocacy) helps her to unsettle the meaning of this category and make room for a new understanding (enunciatory communities).
 * The structure of the discourse in the text is "recursive." "Recursion produces meaning through iteration, running back over preceding operations again and again to better understand how they've already determined what the next operation can be" (23).
 * She runs through the 7 research questions eleven times, each time using the encounter of a new enunciatory community with her questions as a kind of experiment to find out what could be said, unexpectedly.
 * The text embodied an argument about the "constructedness of all description and thus the political implications of methodology" by, at times, using the "space of the question" to describe how she produced ethnographic descriptions (21-1).
 * Local vs. global is certainly challenged. Marcus and Fischer: "the task lies ahead of re-shaping our dominant macro frameworks for the understanding of historic political-economy, such as capitalism, so that they can represent the actual diversity and complexity of local situations for which they try to account in general terms" (9). Scales are intentionally cut across throughout the text.

How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development?
 * The chronology jumps around and time is not presented as linear. This style of non-linear presentation of "the data" perhaps embodies Lacan's conceptualization of retroaction, anticipation and punctuation and Derrida's exploration of the future anterior. While highly structured, the book seems to take the reader on a journey with surprises. It does not feel like a book where the introduction lays out the "theory" and the middle simply confirms and shows examples of that theory.

How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text?
 * Most explicitly in the prologue, but it is frequently brought back into the text. Temporal context in which the Bhopal disaster happened, the advocacy work took place, and the ethnography was written.

How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text?
 * The internal tensions and heteogeneities within each culture are focused on.
 * A book about "the [global] system," "social structures" is taken very broadly. But the book zooms in and out and focuses on multiple scales. Chapter 6, "situational particularities," for example, takes a close look at the social structures in and around Bhopal and catalyzed and corroded advocacy for gas victims.

How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated?
 * They "key informants'" (which I think are the BGIA activists) perspectives are revealed in part by including many long excerpts of the work they produced (press releases, collected interviews) as well as through interviews with the author. Perhaps this was, in part, a way to challenge ethnographic authority.

How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described?
 * Clearly the text brings attention to some of the ways in which industrial production of chemicals for pesticide use can expose workers and neighbors to deadly and disease-causing compounds. We also hear about the technical expertise that the author needed to rapidly develop (i.e. drawing figures of the chemical plant). But the details of the chemistry and engineering behind the production of these projects are not the focus of the book and receive relatively little space. For this text, and the intended audiences, a "black box" representation of the chemicals is largely sufficient.

How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers?
 * There is quite a bit of detail in the extended interview sections, especially the "testimonies" of gas victims and their families. I think if half as many testimonies were included, the key conceptual arguments would not be affected, except that giving a "voice to the voiceless" could be a methodological and stylistic choice that also contributed to theoretical arguments about the roles of the ethnographer and "informants" in entextualizing memory and perspective.

What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument?
 * The text can be read in multiple ways. One can "read horizontally, through each chapter, or vertically, across chapters, each of which is organized around these questions" (20).
 * "Tracked across the text, the questions facilitate comparison and scope, rather than depth of description of any one enunciatory community" (20). I have always been afraid of that question: "yes, but what are your //questions//," because I don't see how I could know in advance. But this book shows a way to remain "open" and listen to the material while not giving up the analytical focus that may have brought the researcher to do research in the first place. The questions, most likely, also transformed as material was gathered, in a recursive process, perhaps similar to grounded theory approaches.

What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect?
 * There are postcards, posters, photographs, advertisements, etc. produced by most of the enunciatory communities, including the author. They serve to connect us more closely with the groups. Artistic production can be a personal act and the aesthetics tend to reveal something about the producers that could be difficult to put into words.
 * Union Carbide's ads are especially memorable ("without air, life stops" and the image of a hand pouring chemicals out of laboratory glassware).

What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes?
 * Often when another author's work is alluded to (for "further reading"), a significant chunk of their text is included. I appreciate this greatly because I rarely actually follow through and look up interesting work referenced in the footnotes.
 * Terms (like "enunciatory") are clarified.
 * Much of the (explicit) theory is put in the footnotes. I love this stuff. The theory is "difficult." I feel like I gain a better understanding of it with each read and it is interesting how it takes on new meaning when plugged into different projects and empirical data.

How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”?
 * It is largely performed through deconstruction. Internal contradictions are drawn out. But this form of is not reserved for "the opposition." "Integrity" is not valorized, but questioned. The author's goal is to develop ways to understand the Bhopal disaster "in a way that catalyzes progressive advocacy, while recognizing faults in the system within which progressive advocacy has been built" (22). If anything is "the opposition," it is the system as status quo. And if the system is seen only in terms of opposition, then possibilities for intervention and unlikely collaboration will be missed.

How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not?
 * The text is situated in a particular ethnographic tradition (the roots of which are exemplified in Writing Culture, who's editors were Fortun's advisers).
 * The author prefers to think in terms of recursion, over reflexivity.
 * "Reflexivity calls for the ethnographer to position herself. Recursivity positions her within processes she affects without controlling, within competing calls for response. Reflexivity asks what constitutes the ethnographer as a speaking subject. Recursivity asks what interrupts her and demands a reply" (23).
 * "We" seems often to refer to the BGIA activists, including the author.

__**Circulation?**__

Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences? What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope?
 * I think the text is written primarily for ethnographers and other social scientist/humanities folks inside academia. But it could also have purchase with activists and others outside of academia interested in environmental justice, toxics, and how people make sense of their world. Much of the denser theory is relegated to the footnotes.

What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious?
 * My first response was to say that the most "key" conceptual brick is enunciatory communities. But I think my conception of "community" is similar (perhaps because "enunciatory communities" have leaked into my thinking secretly?). For me, it is the double bind and the way it is beautifully illuminated for different groups in different situations that I find to be the freshest "new knowledge."

How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research?
 * The main argument about the need to unsettle "events" and explore the complex situations that set them up is very generalizable.

What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text?
 * Do not let a lack of expertise stop you from writing and acting. Just do it. Advocacy will call on expertise that you only partially have developed, but it will also help you to develop new literacies and skills.
 * It is possible, although perhaps very difficult, to do good ethnographic fieldwork and write good academic texts while engaging as an advocate. The book is an example of "casting one's lot" for some kinds of worlds and not others (in Haraway's sense).