Rogat+-+Memo+-+Paradigm+Shift

Michelle Rogat

Shift in Sign Systems; A Paradigm Shift


 * Sustainability Movement Overall
 * The main focus of the environmental movement is now on the actual answers to cleaner energy and better efficiency, the actual projects, but it should have its main focus on the process itself, the actual process of getting to those projects, implementing them, and how to get everyone involved on board and why there are failures in this movement. (Schendler) "...change resistance is usually what makes social problems difficult. In fact, regardless of whether change resistance is high or low, it is impossible to solve the proper coupling part of a social problem without first solving the change resistance part." (Harich)
 * "Green"
 * Green has a lot of definitions from being untamed and wild to symbolizing money. Nowadays green also symbolizes being environmentally sound and sustainable. what going green used to mean and what it means now - get more from "Truth about Green Business", "The Necessary Revolution", and other texts read from previous classes.
 * Sustainability in Business
 * Used to just mean to be able to stay open and running and being profitable/successful in the long run, long run for most businesses being 10 years into the future. Now sustainability has an environmental definition and includes the corporate social responsibility and reducing environmental impact while still being a successful business. - get more from texts
 * View of Country Clubs
 * the older generational view of the country club and the new generations view on the country club - will get more from interviews with members and from reading the thesis by J. Sherwood.
 * The term "Resistance"
 * The environmental movement used to be described as "direct action resistance" to how society was being run at the time (Taylor from State of the World 2013). However, when I use the term resistance it is in describing the problems that are holding back the sustainability and environmental movement as a whole. I think this is because I have grown up in a later time with teachings that sustainability is needed for our future so it is inevitability that we are trying to work towards as best and as fast as we can. So there's been a shift in the thought that environmental sustainability is this radical thing that has to be fought for, to now when environmental sustainability is a change that will be happening in our culture, the only variable about it is how fast and smoothly we'll get there.
 * From studying down to studying up
 * "The cultural invisibility of the rich and powerful is as much a part of their privilege as their wealth and power, and a democratic anthropology should be working to reverse this invisibility." (Gusterson) A democratic and transparent society helps sustainability prosper and grow, and studying up will increase the transparency and bring the shapers of society into the light. Gusterson points out the issue of access and methodology involved with studying the elite. Usually the elite are behind guarded closed doors and locked gates, so in most cases participant-observation isn't an option. Unless, as he points out, the researcher somehow first becomes an insider, as I am to an extent. Studying up hasn't happened much before because it can make the research uneasy and it is easier to study down because of access to subjects. (Womack)