I tend to listen into people's conversations. During this one, overheard at IKEA this morning in the checkout queue, two women in their late twenties/early thirties touched on issues of gift giving, shopping (1), style, entrepreneurialism, employment, globalisation, and education/training. So many themes, issues and topics get packed into everyday conversations. This is what they said:
'I got some gift vouchers for Marks this Christmas. £30. I got something for £28 and they can't even give you two coins in return. What can you buy for £2 at Marks?'
'Well, you could put it towards a pair of knickers.'
'It's too expensive there. Mind you, there's some lovely stuff. Much better than it used to be.'
'It was so frumpy'
'It was that man who went from Next to George at Asda and then to M & S'
'What's his name?'
'Erm. George. It's really turned around.'
(...) 'They don't have enough staff here do they?'
'And they change so fast. Not the management. They work them hard here.'
(...) 'There's no money in IT now. A friend was telling me. The bottoms dropped out.'
'It's all gone to India'
'There aren't enough skills. You can't get a plumber, builder or plasterer when you need one.'
'They say they're setting up new apprenticeships.' (3)
(1) For more on shopping see: Miller, D. (1998), A Theory of Shopping, Cambridge, Polity.
(2) I heard on Radio 4 the other day that the exchange of tokens and money is becoming an increasingly popular form of gift-giving in the United States. And, when I think about it, among my family members as well. Are we harder to please, more uncertain about the needs of others, devolving choice, or more honest about not wanting to repeat unwanted exchanges of yesteryear? For a simple introduction to gifts, exchange and reciprocity see chapter 3 in: Joy, H. (1999), An Introduction to Social Anthropology. Other People's Worlds, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Palgrave.
(3) For more on modern apprenticeships go to: Learning and Skills Council

If, in one way or another, you're interested in HIV/AIDS education and young people, a good summary of key issues has just been published (1). I never used to see much relevance of ideas produced from practice across a number of countries (especially resource poor contexts) to what happened in the UK. I've also met with a number of HIV/AIDS professionals who have believed the same (whether this be in work with young people or gay men). It's partly a problem of contextuality and generalization. Better, perhaps, in recognition that no single approach will suit all purposes, to consider the extent to which ideas can be extrapolated from one setting to another (2). I was never quite sure whether a lack of consideration was to do with the text (a lack of relevance), or my approach to it (lack of imagination). Could be either, but personal tactics seemed to have made visible UN system strategies (3)
(1) IIEP/UNESCO (2002), 'HIV/AIDS & Education. A Strategic Approach', Paris, IIEP/UNESCO.
(2) Patton, M.Q. (1997), Utilization-Focused Evaluation. The New Century Text, London, Sage.
(3) Ideas about tactics and strategies from De Certau. See Buchanan, I. (2001), Michel De Certau Cultural Theorist, London, Sage.

Here's some stuff from my mate Adrian ...

Announcing ... Live Culture at Tate Modern
27 - 30 March 2003

Bookings open 6 January 2003

Live Culture is a programme of performances, presentations and debates considering the shifting nature of live practices in relation to the visual arts. Bringing together artists, theorists and curators, this event explores the expansion of performance art across broader artistic and social arenas and its role in relation to cultural change.

Live actions, durational performances, screen and wall based works includes Oleg Kulik, Russia's most celebrated performance artist, marking his London debut with Armadillo for Your Show, Franko B with his acclaimed catwalk performance I Miss You!, the performance installation Ex-Centris (A Living Diorama of Fetish-ized Others) by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and a team of international collaborators, La Ribot performing her entire Distinguidas Piezas series in Panoramix (1993 - 2000), Forced Entertainment taking audiences beyond 'theatre performance' with 12am: Awake and Looking Down and Quizoola!, Hayley Newman's famed fictitious photographs Connotations - Performance Images 1994-98, and screenings of British Live Art videos curated by Blast Theory, Rona Lee, Pope & Guthrie and Aaron Williamson on the thematics of 'site'.

Book from 6 January online at www.tate.org.uk
or call Tate ticketing 020 7887 8888

Full programme details can be found on www.liveartlondon.demon.co.uk

Live Culture is curated and produced by Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine of the Live Art Development Agency and Adrian Heathfield in collaboration with Tate Modern.

Gaydar has featured much in my life, and in the lives of thousands of gay men, over the last few years. I've been rather captured by electronic mediation, it often seeming preferable to oralism and written exchanges. And I've not been the only one (see: Poster, M (1990) The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Cambridge, Polity).

What is it with texting? As we mediate our relationships through the screen with words that become smaller and smllr, will we end up communicating in 1s and 0s? We're encouraged to produce more and more ideas and words about our bodies, emotions and souls (see Rose, N. (1998), Inventing Our Selves. Psychology, Power and Personhood., Cambridge). Yet we seem encouraged to perform stories about our selves as chunks of information (from Lyotard, see (1)), à la carte emotions as it were. I suspect we are keen on forms of lay reductionism in one way or another (2) to make the world a simpler place. How often do you come across people who encourage you to connect personal/local/national/global? How welcome would that person be?
(1) Webster, F.T. (2002), Theories of the Information Society (2nd Edition), London, Routledge.
(2) See chapter 5 in Slife, B.D., & Williams, R.N. (1995), What's Behind the Research? Discovering the Hidden Assumptions in the Behavioural Sciences, London, Sage.

Someone told me about unexpected feelings that arose after months of believing a relationship is over. Jealousy made an appearance, with its usual companions of love, desire and anger. Should we ever really think a relationship is 'over' because it's in the past (apart, of course, from the convenience of doing so to develop another one)? The first time I really thought about the impact of linear conceptions of time on emotion was via an episode of Deep Space Nine. Closer to home, though, there's Hall, E. T (1983) The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, London/Doubleday

Here are some themes for Telling Tales: people, their spaces and places, communication, growing up, subsistence, perceived economies, relationships and sex, familes and households, gifts and reciprocity, passing things across generations, resistances, political organisation, religion and the supernatural(s), health and illness, arts and culture, change and the future. My aim is to work the occasional diary around these themes (1), seeing which are more and less useful.
(1) Drawn from Haviland (1999) Cultural Anthropology, London/Harcourt Brace.