First run Interview

Here are the notes from the first-run interview. Since we have changed our topic to focus more on the coffeeshops as a legally- and culturally-created space, I had no real analogy in the States, so I decided to focus my interview on a visitor's impressions of those spaces, and the social mores, customs, and practicalities of marijuana in the Netherlands from their outside perspective. In hindsight, it might have been interesting to talk to a bar owner here to compare the sort of legal scrutiny that they receive to that of a coffeeshop owner in Amsterdam. Of course, there is a big difference between those two establishments in that the production and distribution of alcohol is legal. So, notes:

Interviewee:

Name: *******

Place and Date: 6:00pm May 22, 2007 at the Matador Bar in Ballard

Demographics: White male, 30 yrs. old, grew up in Bowling Green, OH; recently of Georgia, currently in the process of moving to Seattle.

Questions:

1. Tell me about your trip to Amsterdam.
1. How long were you there? When did you go? What did you do there? Why did you go?
2. What were your experiences of coffeeshops while in Amsterdam?
3. What were your impressions of the native culture in regards to coffeeshops in Amsterdam? How did you feel as a tourist?
4. What manifestations of tolerance of marijuana and coffeeshops did you notice during your time in Amsterdam?
5. What rules or customs were you aware of in regards to marijuana coffeeshops in Amsterdam? How were you made aware of these rules or customs?
6. Did you see/were you aware of ant conflicts related to coffeeshops?

Field Notes:

¨ Interview occurred in a busy bar, at a busy time of day. Not a desirable setting, but what we could manage at the time.

¨ Interviewee admitted, somewhat ashamedly, that the primary reason for going to Amsterdam was to smoke marijuana. Interviewee and traveling companion arrived in Amsterdam and made their way to a coffeeshop before they even checked into their hostel.

¨ Interviewee expressed some uncertainty about how to posit answers. He suggested that there is a difference between the way he would talk about drugs to somebody who had never done them and how he would talk about them to somebody who had. Different language, attitudes, etc. Drugs are associated with counterculture, and as such create their own social world. **I wonder if we are going to see evidence of this in Amsterdam, where soft drugs have undergone a process of social normalization over the last 30 years.**

¨ Going to coffeeshops and getting high “was not an end.” Spent a lot of time high, but once the novelty had worn off he would get high and then go and do other things, not sit around in coffeeshops.

¨ “Not knowing what to expect, we had to ask what the deal was” when first entering coffeeshop.

¨ Was taken by surprise at the potency, despite having smoked marijuana before. “Scaled it back” after first experience.

¨ “It seems silly looking back.”

¨ “A lot of people will get their picture taken with a cop, holding up a joint. That’s a tourist thing to do.”

¨ “I was well aware that it was legal but techinically tolerated. Everyone knows that in America it’s illegal to drink in public, but there are times and places where drinking in public was tolerated. I figured it was kind of like that. Put it in a plastic cup, don’t be an idiot, and nobody’s going to mind. So I guess I related it to things I already knew.”

¨ “There are definitely mores. I remember having conversations with locals about, you don’t just walk around getting high in public, y’know, and just because it’s tolerated or legal or done doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate in every situation, and that was pretty clear right off the bat, talking to anybody.”

¨ Related a story about smoking a joint while walking up to a train that they were going to board. Conductor said, “This is your train, but that has to stay.” According to interviewee, conductor was not offended, but was ready to enforce regulations and mores.

¨ Interviewee expressed no awareness of conflict around drugs in the culture. “I never saw any indication of that. They seemed very well integrated into the society. It was a thing, it was there, you could partake of it if you wanted, you could ignore it if you wanted. Similar to the way that alcohol is treated here. There are plenty of people who drink, and there are plenty of people who have drinking problems, and everyone knows about all of that. I got a very similar feel about the way that people dealt with it there. They dealt with it very commonsense for the most part. I didn’t see hardly anything about policy or police enforcing it or anything, so if there was policy having an effect, it was doing it sort of indirectly.”

Thoughts:

Again, environment was not conducive to long conversation, but subject was ready to speak willingly about the topic. And this was an American talking about his experiences there, which is going o be very different from the native, the politician, the coffeeshop owner, the police officer talking about the role that it plays in their lives/jobs/culture/etc. on a more or less daily basis.

First few days in Amsterdam will definitely have to be spent getting bearings, sussing out first contacts, seeing which groups are going to provide most opportunities for contact.

Did not have much need to look at environment in this interview as the environment was artificial and was separate from the place and the phenomenon being researched. It is interesting that it was in a bar given interviewee’s perception of how Dutch feelings about marijuana more or less mirror American sentiments towards alcohol. This will have to be investigated further as we do some direct observation in coffeeshops in different areas and at different times of day.

New Questions!

Our research questions, as they stand:

In the Netherlands, the possession, sale, and consumption of marijuana is technically illegal, but culturally and even commercially acknowledged and condoned. Because of this, coffeeshops and the activities therein exist in a strange legal limbo, with the parameters for their existence and acceptance constantly being defined by cultural mores, political interests, law enforcement, and the clientèle that utilize their services. This research attempts to probe the ways in which one or several of these forces influence the perception and operation of coffeeshops. Do the relevant actors believe the boundaries of this space to be tenuous? How dynamic is the definition of this space with regard to the actor's perception of its boundaries? The question in the research is intentionally left open so that upon arrival and initial survey of the scene in Amsterdam, we can identify the conflicts and potential points of flux around the relevant institutions.

Sample questions:

For law enforcement:
* How do you understand your role with regard to coffeeshops?
* Have you felt like your role with regard to the coffeeshops has changed over the last 5 years? The last 10 years? How and why?
* Do you feel that changing cultural or political currents influence your position or day-to-day activities?

For politicians/policy makers:
* How do you understand the legal space around cofeeshops? How do you feel about the current situation around coffeeshops?
* Do you think that the current legal situation with coffeeshops is adequate, or do you believe that it needs to better defined?
* From where and to what degree do you feel pressure to better define or re-define the current situation?

For coffeeshop owners:
* Do you feel like the environment in which you run your business has changed significantly in the last 5 years? The last 10 years? How and why?
* How has your business fared in the last 10 years? Better or worse?
* How precarious do you feel your business to be? Do you perceive the current tolerance of coffeeshops to have limits?
* How do you feel about the fact that in running a legitimate business you are forced to engage in quasi-legal acts? Does this worry you? Is it something that you think about?

Thinking Ethnography

The readings on Ethnography were useful for helping to frame and define what is a potentially very useful research presentation technique. I felt like much of the Maanen article was perhaps too concentrated on audience to really address issues of use and form, though his engagingly written history offered many insights on past (and potential) uses of ethnography, and the presentation of the methodological development was illuminating.

Of more use was the second piece, and organizing and conducting interview research. These helped bring to light many of the practical considerations that one must consider when engaging in ethnographic research and conducting in-depth interviews. Lots of good hints about taking notes as you go and taking in the whole environment.

The method of ethnography is going to be of use for Chase and I as we are exploring the daily activity within the coffeeshops in Amsterdam. I can see making observational trips to different types of coffeeshops (the literature divides them up into those that are for tourists, for the native Dutch, and for various ethnic groups) at different times of the day to observe activities and transactions. These trips will obviously veer away from "participant observation." Taking note of atmosphere, clientele, cultural or ritualistic activities, etc. and using some of these ethnographic techniques will enable us to develop a detailed portrait of the spaces, their cultural position and significance, etc.

As far as questions to ask and people to ask them to, I am still wrestling with this question a bit. As is evident in my previous blog post, my conception of the research project has kind of blown open in the last week and I am somewhat desperately flailing about for an anchor, a center, a focus. Chase and I are both obviously interested in the development of coffeeshops as social institutions, the culture within and the culture without, but I am questioning what the best ways to address those questions is. Talking to coffeeshop owners/workers, health professionals, law enforcement, and other native Dutch is going to fit into this somehow, but I'm still trying to decide what the best overarching research question is going to be. Need to talk with the rest of the group soon!

Post-Presentation Notes, Thoughts, and Questions

These are things that I jotted down while listening to Paul's comments. If anybody would like to comment (or if anybody even sees this), I would greatly appreciate it.

* How do coffeeshops fit in with or become part of people's daily routines?

* Look at pragmatic tolerance around coffeeshops not as something inherent to the culture, but as part of a process of fight and compromise that has played out in Dutch culture over the last several decades (and I have at least one article to back this up). It's not a factor in the creation of coffeehouses as a social institution, but a result of these conflicts.

* Don't try to make it more wholesome than it is, and seek out where the contradictions and conflicts are.

* How does the drug policy play out in international relations?

* Focus on one small and interesting question.

* Methodological issues, RE: variability as relates to the fact that we are two different people conducting interviews. Where are the places where we can introduce stability into our findings? It's true that in my own research I have usually resisted this type of rigidity, but if we want to try to merge our work, it could be important for us to think about standardization of results.

* WODC studies coffeeshops a lot. Main problem with their research is how to track behavior. We should look into their research, and Paul said that he could get us in contact with some people working there.

* Speaking of contacting Paul, I never actually talked to him about our research project like I had intended to when he was here. I would like to get a plan that is a little more solid than what we have right now (do you feel like it isn't solid? The presentation exposed a lot of holes to me, which is something that we should talk about ASAP), e-mail it to him and get him a bit more directly involved in what we're doing. If this lines up with VKS stuff at all, even potentially, I would personally love the chance to spend some extra time in there.

* Julie has the web address for the Addiction Studies Institute thing that is happening in Amsterdam this Summer. I will contact her right away for the web address.

* What do we hope to ADD to the discourse around coffeeshops and the culture around them? Part of answering this question is going to necessitate becoming more familiar with that discourse. I'll contact Paul for the WODC stuff ASAP, and we'll both have to spend some time digging through it. We definitely have our work cut out for us over the next couple of weeks.

* When we were asked what our project was about, both of us jumped straight to the question of where/how they exist in the Dutch cultural space. So, how do we get to that? What is being studied? Who should we be talking to to get at that information?

E-Research and What it Means to Me

As I somewhat clumsily elucidated in class on Monday, I see e-research as occurring in several different ways:

*The creation of flexible and easily managed remote data-stores for use between several researchers looking at similar issues or topics.

*The utilization of knowledge-creation models which focus on remote collaboration.

*The utilization of web technologies in research, enabling such activities as online ethnography and online network analysis.

Umm… I came up with a couple of more examples while I was walking to Big Time with my computer to eat lunch, have a beer, and type this up, but that’s all I can remember right now. Still that’s a decent if simplistic list, and must have some basis in reality.

So I am still considering how I should attempt to utilize e-research methods in my own research project, and will no doubt come up with ways while I am learning more about the possibilities of e-research. One thing that stands out as a possibility is conducting some web network analysis once I have identified some sources where visitors to Amsterdam are getting information about the Netherlands and the opportunities for extra-curricular activities that exists there.

And that’s all I got right now. Hmm… I wonder if Chase has any good ideas…

The Netherlands, Irony, and the VKS

It seems like irony drips off the pages of Buruma's book Murder in Amsterdam.

Re-reading the chapters for this assignment, which focused on Muslim communities and "Submission," one gets the impression that they are reading Catch-22 rather than a discourse of life in Amsterdam during the last half-decade. The degree to which actions have unintended and/or opposite consequences, parties flip perspectives, and situations are generally fouled up by, well, themselves is staggering and heartbreaking.

Most significant in my mind is the assertion on page 121 about the rates of schizophrenia among Muslim men in the Netherlands. "A young male of the second generation was ten times more likely to be schizophrenic than a native Dutchman from a similar economic background," Buruma reports. That in itself is terrifying: that the shared experience of a single group of people can have such a damaging effect, and not socially or economically but psychologically. And then you start reading into the inferred causes of such a split, that deep disconnect with both their family's culture and the new place that they've been transplanted to, and it just seems all the worse and more hopeless. And then the liberal factions ask themselves why these kids turn to extremism...

It just goes round and round: The immigrants come to this place, bringing with them very different ideas of how to live, of what to believe; different social structures and expectations, and with very few inroads into the society that they are entering. In the name of tolerance, the natives balk at what they see as backwards or regressive social tendencies, and this in turn pushes the immigrants even further to the outskirts, unhinges their social orders. The natives see this and in turn ostracize them further. And so on. And so on.

The case of the second generation is particularly sad, raised in an environment that doesn't jive with the ways that they are taught to live by their families and cultures. There was a passage about how the fact that they speak the native language while their parents usually don't means that they have to negotiate through governmental bureaucracies on their parents behalf. This often undermines their faith in their parents, shaking the base of the family unit, stranding these kids in a world that their parents don't understand. And the irony lies in the fact that the lack of access to the society, the lack of social services and roads to integration, further alienates them from the society, and the society from them. The need to deal with a culture that doesn't accept them and that is, in many ways, contrary to the belief system that they have inherited can be psychically crippling.

Am I repeating myself? I feel like I'm repeating myself.

Anyways, Theo van Gogh's approach to irony ended up being his downfall. The whole of Dutch society in Buruma's world seems to be filled with people who want to let their words speak for them so they don't have to act, and once action happens its effects are devastating. I was really intrigued by van Gogh's work on Najib and Julia. The work seemed surprisingly frank and sincere in the way that Buruma described it, and actually concerned with portraying and engaging Dutch Muslims. It makes his blatant offense seem mostly like a game, like there was some world view buried under his bristly public persona that he did want to express. In light of that work (granted, I haven't seen it or anything else he has done, besides Submission - we should work on correcting that), at least in the way Buruma describes it, irony seems sadly and ultimately fatally self-defeating.

Admittedly, I'm having a difficult time drawing a conceptual link between these conversations and Wouter's article on the VKS. I did have a question though: One of the primary assertions in the intro to the article says taht "working in these new information environments, researchers should become more productive and better able to cope with interdisciplinary problems." Now, the productivity I can understand: the aim is to link researchers working on similar projects across distances in digital environments. But how does that necessarily relate to interdisciplinarity? Is it just the fact that large collections of information and data can be aggregated and shared, or is there something else?

I like the view that the work at VKS is inherently interventionist, and my pithy comment to tie this to Buruma is that some intervention is needed in Amsterdam on behalf of the immigrants there. I can understand the Dutch being leery of Muslim customs, and I believe that it is possible for the groups to engage each other openly and sincerely to foster understanding. However, this isn't likely to happen until immigrants are given the opportunity to join the culture, and encouraged to do so. I talked about the cycle of ostracization before, and it seems like fostering integration is the best way to break it.

A Shot at the Abstract

The city of Amsterdam is unique on the world stage. It is a mid-sized metropolis, heavily touristed, and well-known for its permissive attitudes towards soft drugs and sex work. Our research seeks to understand the way that these permissive attitudes are understood by natives of and visitors to the city. For the “native” component of our study, we will be looking at how the permissiveness of Dutch society affects the way in which the Dutch perceive their homeland. We will ask a series of questions regarding this subject and see if there is any variation in opinion based upon such demographics such as age, religion, geographic location, etc. Furthermore, we will try and establish what the appropriate social conventions are when participating in the unique Dutch culture, and how people living in Amsterdam feel about all of the outside attention. Conversely, we hope to explore the ways that visitors to the city view this permissiveness, how it colors their impressions of Amsterdam and the Dutch, and how they understand the social norms and conventions around activities which are illicit in their own countries. Also important is where tourists get information about cultural norms, the accuracy of these sources, and the ways in which normative behavior is communicated across cultures. Our research will be situated geographically both within the city of Amsterdam and across national lines. We will address these questions through several methods, including on-the-street interviews, online research, surveys, and participant observation in many different areas of Amsterdam.

Reading the City: Deja Vu

Last night, Chase and I headed down to Deja Vu, which is at the corner of First and Pine, across the street from Seattle's venerable Pike Place Market. It's a combination sex shop and strip club, one of less than half a dozen strip clubs in Seattle. It was around 9:00 and dark, and the Vu's garish neon signs provided about 60% of the light on the block, advertising the products in the store (you can't help but giggle when you look up to see the word "lubes" flashing in blue neon 12 feet high over your head) and the schedule at the club. It's hard to miss.

Deja Vu's placement is one of it's most peculiar features. The rest of the street mostly houses mostly restaurants, clothing shops, and stores aimed at tourists, mostly ranging towards the upscale. Several major construction projects are currently in the works, including a Four Seasons Hotel less than a block away, with rooms and residences. As is true of much of downtown Seattle, condos proliferate. We didn't notice anyplace on the street that resembled a "seedy" bar, the type of place that you could imagine patrons of Deja Vu "loading up" in before heading to the non-alcoholic club.

Chase and I set up camp across the street at an outdoor table in front of an African restaurant, and ordered tea to sip while we watched. The atmosphere in the neighborhood was strange, with about 50% of the people around looking like up-scale tourist power-couples, and the other 50% looking like... well, like what you expect in an urban downtown.

As we sat, I kept an eye on the people as they walked in front of the spectacle that is Deja Vu. 80% of the men (no matter which of the demeaning and limited categories that I invented up there) turned their heads to look as they walked past, while only about 10% of the women did, either trying to pretend it didn't exist or avoid being blinded. The ages of male "lookers" ran the gamut while the female"lookers" skewed younger. A steady stream of men entered during the hour or so that we observed, mostly in their 20's and 30's. We only saw two women enter the establishment, both on the arm of a guy, and both couples re-emerged shortly thereafter, suggesting they were more interested in something in the store than the show happening in the back.

The position of the club and the generally bemused reactions of most of the people walking by suggests a tolerance of the establishment and their goods and services. Its presence not only amid such generally high-class surroundings but also at the tourist epicenter of Seattle lends further credence to the tolerant assumption: if Seattle didn't want everyone who comes to visit seeing the direct evidence of its seething undercurrent of vice in the form of the Vu, odds are someone (the city, surrounding businesses, etc.) would have it closed or moved. The young-ish male skew of the people actually entering the establishment is in keeping with my expectations of who the clientèle or intended audience was likely to be.

After a stint of people-watching, Chase and I decided to go and talk to the parking-attendant in the lot adjacent to the Vu. As we approached we noticed that the attendant was talking to a twenty-something year-old man in a sharp suit who, when we got closer, looked at me with a glint of recognition and said, "Jack?" Turns out, this guy was actually the friend of a friend who I had met only once, and who on that occasion had done a commendable job of pissing me off (I'll spare you the details of that evening, but the curious are welcome to ask). This guy was now a bouncer at Deja Vu, and was happy to answer the lingering questions that Chase and I had about the club, its relationship to the rest of the block, and the atmosphere around it.

We asked him his impressions of how the club is viewed, both by visitors and neighboring businesses. He confirmed our previous assumption that people will generally ignore it, look at it bemusedly, or go in. He claimed that relationships with neighboring businesses were good. Its neighbors acknowledge that it is a draw for certain people, and that there is spillover from the club to their own businesses, particularly those of the alcohol and food variety. The club owners have actively reached out to its neighbors, try to be understanding and respectful of their concerns, and have acted swiftly to address problems around the club. He acknowledged the presence of certain groups of social undesirables (mostly crack-heads in the back alley) and the fact that there are occasionally problems like fights and drugs that have to be dealt with in the club, but the fact that much of this happens late at night probably means that it is not much of a concern for either neighboring businesses or the tourist crowd. The approach from the outside seems to be very cost-benefit oriented: as long as the costs in terms of social disruption are not too great, those in the neighborhood accept the benefit of increased business traffic and refrain from moralizing.

During our conversation, the scene around Deja Vu remained very much the same: people trying to navigate the tiny parking lot, groups of young men walking in, other groups walking past. A man in a priest's collar did walk by in the company of several others, speaking loudly of salvation and the word of God, punctuating his sentences with "Hallelujah!" though he didn't seem overly concerned with the club itself. He neither slowed nor looked askance, and his sermonizing could still be heard as he made his way further up the block.

After talking with our informant for about 20 minutes, we walked on, politely declining his offer of half-off admission. On the way back to the car we stopped briefly across the street from the Lusty Lady about a block away, but there was nothing at all happening there, and with the rain starting we decided to call it a night.

I was surprised at how much can be deduced about a place by stopping and watching it. Watching the people, both those walking past and heading in, one could begin to make assumptions about the club's social standing and some generalizations about the cultural impressions of vice. If people had scowled, if more people had refrained from staring, if it had been located in a different part of town, etc., I would have guessed that people's views on the place were somewhat more negative. These are all assumptions and should not be taken as fact in isolation, but can provide a blueprint for understanding.

The fact that I knew the bouncer was an amazing bit of coincidence, and highlighted the importance of finding informants. Speaking to people who work in the coffeeshops and around the Red Light in addition to observation is a useful way of understanding both the behavioral expectations and the realities. Especially as regards industries of vice, the impressions of business owners around the area are good sources for information as problems that arise are going to probably affect them more directly than most other people. That will definitely be something to keep in mind when I hit the ground in Amsterdam.

Web Presence (or present lack thereof...)

I found some blog links that feature some general information on Amsterdam. They primarily comprise different official channels for tourist information, many of which are originating from within the Netherlands.

http://www.holland.com/amsterdam/gb/

http://www.amsterdam.info/

http://www.amsterdamtourist.nl/en/default.aspx

http://www.iamsterdam.com/

I also found the website for the the Prostitution Information Center:

http://www.dewallenwinkel.nl/start.html

and the Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory:

http://www.coffeeshop.freeuk.com/

My efforts at finding more community- or interaction-based information has so far been negligible. I spent a long time digging through some fairly dull travel blogs with individual posts about how wasted people got in Amsterdam (many of which were found here: http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/Amsterdam/). I suppose that in and of itself is somewhat instructive, but not exactly what I had in mind. I am hoping to be able to uncover some stuff that is more official - respectable travel blogs that a person might turn to if they were trying to learn about what traveling to a place is like. Additionally I need to try to hunt down some stuff from within Amsterdam that may be related to native views on outsiders coming in.

Or I need to scrap the whole idea and come up with something else...

At the risk of sounding redundant here...

After a little bit more thought and the assembling of what I hope to be an honest-to-god research group, I can confidently present an ever more slightly refined idea of what the hell it actually it is that I'll be doing. So:

I will be working with Chase and Edward (assuming he writes back sometime) on a study into perceptions of Amsterdam's culture of permissiveness and pragmatic tolerance. Chase and Edward have both shown an interest in studying the apparent conservative backlash growing within against Amsterdam's anything-goes social policies. I meanwhile will be looking at these policies from the outside, by talking to tourists in Amsterdam about their impressions of the social norms and cultural and cultural currents that they are aware of, if any, as well as exploring issues of how presence in a more permissive culture effects their behavior or opinions in regards to drugs and/or prostitution. We will be able to use one another's research to build upon the missing halves of our questions: they giving me insights on how A'dammers see their own city, and me on the way it's seen from without.

Some sources that we can consult before heading over are the universe of blogs (me travel blogs and they message boards elating to certain political parties or persuasions). In addition, I will also be looking at information from Dutch tourist organizations and embassies (official discourse), as well as information distributed by the Museum of Prostitution and Marijuana and/or different organizations from within the "vice" industry to see what kinds of information are presented by them.

I will follow this research up with interviews with tourists on the ground in Amsterdam. I will have to look into where the best places to encounter and interact with tourists are, though Daam Square, museums, the train station, and hash bars are all likely options (again, preferably before the interview subjects have smoked...) I believe that it will be relatively easy to access my population, as tourists are often eager to talk to people that speak their language when visiting other countries.

With this research, I hope to be able to contrast the ways that tourists understand or misunderstand cultural/behavioral expectations, analyze the ways in which cultural messages and norms are transmitted, as well as assess various sources of information that tourists may be using to understand the customs on the ground in Amsterdam and make suggestions for improving the dissemination of information to these groups.

Groovy?

More Random Research Ideas

As I have been considering this more carefully, I am thinking that perhaps talking to tourists would be a very interesting way of going about things, and might lead to nice overlaps with people who are interested in looking at the ways that Amsterdammers themselves understand both the reality and the perceptions of their own country.

I would be interested in seeing where visitors to Amsterdam go and what they do, as well as what their understanding of the Dutch culture of tolerance and permissiveness, and how they develop those perceptions. I'd like to explore how cultural information is transmitted, especially in places that are as beyond most people's experience in their own home-countries as hash bars and the Red Light. I would be interested in seeing how a perceived permissiveness affects and changes people's prejudices and behaviors, both while they are in Amsterdam and after they leave. This research would couple nicely with research about how Amsterdammers view the steady stream of tourists that flock to their cities, and how they understand their own "exotic customs."

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow.

Preliminary Thoughts on Research, or Too Many Ideas

It was my love for libraries as community centers as well as places for free intellectual and cultural exploration that led me to my pursuit of a Masters in Library and Information Sciences. Therefore, I would like to be able to explore the public library system in Amsterdam, and see how the experience and social position of the public library is similar to and different from that in the United States.

Some questions: What is the function of the public library in Amsterdam? How does it compare to the function of the public library in the United States? How does it operate as a center of community? What services are available to patrons? What sorts of user groups can be found in the public libraries there? What is the relationship between library staff and patrons in the public library system? What values (public service, privacy, intellectual freedom, etc.) are stressed in this environment? What lessons can libraries in Amsterdam and libraries in the United States learn from each other in relation to the stated and implicit goals and functions of each?

Evidence: This research should be conducted in several libraries in Amsterdam, preferable in different neighborhoods. For example, one might go to the central public library, a branch library in a wealthy area, and a branch library in a poorer area to distinguish how user groups, services, and function differ in each area. Interviews should be conducted with library staff and with patrons (if possible), as well as assessment of services and collection, and analysis of circulation statistics. This data could then be compared with information from studies conducted in the US, as well as anecdotal data and personal experience.

That’s one idea, thought there are others that I am interested in pursuing.

For example, it would be interesting to spotlight a community somewhat unique to Amsterdam and assess their information needs. For example, a study of sex workers or a specific immigrant population could be conducted. I would perform interviews with several subjects to develop an idea of what members of those groups information needs are and how those needs are currently met. Then I would perform an assessment of those sources and provide suggestions of how these sources could be improved.

Additionally, it may be interesting to do a study of tourists in Amsterdam (a population that would probably be easiest of all to access because there are so damn many of them and they would be more likely to speak English!). An assessment could be made of their understanding of Amsterdam society and social norms, with particular attention paid to conduct around drugs and prostitution. An assessment could be made of how these outsiders who are a very large and regular part of social life in Amsterdam understand the place that they are visiting, where they get their information and social messages about Amsterdam, and how the understand and conform to social norms in this new and unique environment. Subjects could likely be found around the train station and in some of the Central District’s hash bars and coffeehouses and interviews conducted on site (hopefully before they sample the wares of these establishments). It would be interesting to look at tourists’ own views on drugs, their own behavior with drugs in the places that they are from, and how those behaviors and views change when they are in a more tolerant environment.

I know, that’s more than one idea. I just have a hard time making my mind up about these things, particularly so early in the game…

On "Submission"

Buruma hits on something when he is talking about this film in the book Murder in Amsterdam: he says that van Gogh and Ali are missing something in Submission, and I think that is very evident. They are missing the audience that should most be moved by the film, namely Muslim women. The film is very intense and very moving, telling the stories of Muslim women, the hardships they face, and the unjust crimes against them: beatings, rapes, and domination. The stories are told as the women wear veils with much of the rest of their bodies exposed, text (apparently of the Koran) drawn on them, praying on Muslim prayer rugs. They speak with Allah directly, asking Him about his reign, his rules, and how what is said in the Koran, what they allegedly suffer under Muslim law, has to do with their spiritual life and their salvation. It’s a very powerful film, and remarkably provocative, but I think that in the midst of its provocation, its message really gets lost.

Ali and van Gogh are presenting their view of Islam as an inherently sexist, unreasonable, and intolerant religion. But who are they trying to convince? If it’s the society at large, it doesn’t seem necessary to make this film. According to Buruma’s assessment of the political and cultural situation in The Netherlands at the time, that sentiment was already present, apparently, and all van Gogh and Ali are doing is adding thoughtless fuel to the fire. Granted, that's usually what hate-mongers want, not reflection but emotion.

If it is Muslim women, the method is obviously going to turn them off. The film is not just anti-Islam, it is sacrilegious, almost gleefully so. In Murder in Amsterdam, we hear about a Muslim woman who was so shocked by the film that her daughter felt embarrassed for her, and who admits that she would never be able to see the film, let alone understand it. A devout Muslim, even one who feels and/or experiences some of the alleged crimes perpetrated against Muslim women in this film is probably going to be too upset to hear what it has to say, or to reflect on how the experiences presented here mirror their own or their culture's situation.

This film should have provoked a conversation among Dutch society about the social meaning of the teachings of the Koran, and instead it provoked a murder. Van Gogh made his life as a provocateur, but is that really what we need when we are dealing with these sorts of delicate issues?

We briefly discussed the complications involved in freedom of speech in class on Monday, and many of those complications are evident when we look at this film, and at the fall-out from it. Certainly neither van Gogh nor Ali deserve to have threats made on their lives for speaking their minds. They both felt that they had a point to make with this film, and it’s a valid point. At the same time, they should have known that it was going to anger people, and anger is incredibly counter-productive when trying to raise sensitive issues of culture and equality, as the tragic story around this film shows.