Progress report and link

Well, i'm making nice progress at the moment, in part thanks to the advice by one of my advisers, in part because I have also had a break from writing, and in part because I currently don't have any math classes to give me anxiety.

I have really enjoyed compressing the writing of the first two chapters into long, single narrative paragraphs. For me this is an ideal way to organize thinking and get a coherent pace for the text. Its also forcing a bit more dicipline into my writing as I can't get away with writing it all at once and doing basic editing. I suppose its a good habit for later, for the M.A.

I just found this blog through the NY Times. It has good stuff, but not quit at the level of Rob Hughes of the IHT.

http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/

Making bread

Make one long paragraph with all the ideas in it; its like a dough for the bread; then you break it into parts and work it out to make more bread, he said. I liked the metaphor, and I have it in front of me as I go to work on chapter 1 again. I broke down the chapter into one long paragraph and now I am going through it and expanding, with as few words as possible, on the major themes. Its a really helpful process.

I think I'll do it for all the chapters.

(re)tooling a bit...

Entries have been lacking, so has inspiration. I really think my Math class is to blame...

You're being to easy on soccer, he said. Well, I still love the game, and criticising your love is a hard thing to do. But he was right, I am. The transformative experience that this thesis is meant to be is on-going, and I have just spent the last two hours writing some of the most 'difficult' words in the process thus far. I am getting closer to the core issues, which is good, but I does cause lots of internal insecurity, and hard hours of self-reflection, and a few nightmares...

Excerpt:

"Popularly (Almond and Verba, 1969; Putnam, 1993; Gellner, 1994; Habermas, 2000) understood as the space dividing the political and the social, where the popular is expressed, and the demands of the state are handed down; it exists in the manipulation of the people be the state, and the state by the people. In this reading it is an independent area where people and government come together to build consensus, but a different reading (Zizeck, Schmidt, Gramsci) cast civil society as an extension of the state. In this model, the dialogue within civil society is state sanctioned and controlled at all times. That is to say, at no point are the ideas within civil society ever truly free or challenging, rather they are a product of mechanisms and values which the states has implanted before the citizen ever comes to express themselves."

The theme here is internal divisions are a training ground for individuals who will be employed for the 'greater' cause if need be. Looking at events in Serbia/Kosovo, it is hard to disagree. Soccer hooligans who cut their teeth fighting each other, are now employed to sack embassies and attack armed NATO troops. The story on Aljazeera.com today made me wonder if the supposed "orchestrated violence had any of the same people involved from the embassy assault. I'll never know, but I'll bet...

Well, time for bed. Math tomorrow....

Hunger

I looked at my sandwich today wanting to eat it. Not because I was hungry, only because there was no reason not to. I had dinner for tonight already prepared if I wanted it. I hesitated because I had eaten half of the sandwich a few hours earlier, and half was more than enough. So to eat the rest seemed greedy. Then I thought about an Egyptian protest chant from 1974: You lead us across the water, now where is our bread going to come from?

The context was Sadat had just reclaimed the Sinai, partly through war, partly through negotiation (though it would not be formalized 'till 1978), yet people in Cairo were starving. Suddenly the reality of a military victory is so meaningless when people are going hungry.

I've never had the experience. I'm so lucky, because many people have. Today the protests are starting up again in Egypt for the same reason. People are going hungry and getting violent enough to kill ten people already. The UN has issued a report that the world (or the poor part of the world) might face a widespread famine. Wow, but I can have a sandwich the size of my face when ever I want.

I didn't eat the rest of my sandwich, I wrapped it back up and will hold on to it until tonight, or take it for lunch tomorrow. Either way, there was no need to eat it then, I can wait until I am actually hungry, until there is good reson to eat it, rather than just greed.

What? Its snowing again?

March 12th already, and this is the first entry for the month... it's been a minute. The progress report is that I have, in theory, two thirds of the thesis written now, and what I think is the most difficult chapter (the middle one) done.

"done", what do I mean by done (Briggs, 2007)? In a rough draft anyway; it is now a platform from which I can build up and out. Done has a lot of finality behind it, perhaps to much, we are never done, not even in death.

I had a conversation with Briggs about the proper use of the ';' today. Apparently it is the abused child of the punctuation world, being incorrectly employed by more people than any other. Poor thing. I'm sure I have been responsible for victimizing it a time or two. It should be used as a pointer; it should indicate that what follows is an elaboration on the idea of the words preceding it.

The other important topic that came up was placing more emphasis on 'I'; putting more of myself into the project by weaving in personal experience. One of the critiques of the first chapter was lack of, not context, but something similar. What would be a useful addition in the first chapter is more examples of how the theories might be weaved into the practice of soccer, by weaving soccer into the discussion of theory.

One way I can achieve this is by bringing in a picture to analyze that can tie in all the elements of the theory. My first thought was a picture of the French National team from 1998. The team was composed of players from the remaining or former colonies. This would give me a reference point for race, colonialism, multiculturalism and nationalism. For power and civil society I would need a different one, but maybe I could work it in.

Then I thought I could just use the picture of CD El Salvador and the Somali Youth from the final of the Fathers Day tournament. It's a picture of a Latino team next mixed in with a Somali team, and a few Europeans mixed in. Black next to tan, next to white. All is soccer kit, all in America, unified by the game and competition, yet divided by color, history, class, and team.