Internal communications on public display

Internal communications is an exciting topic to lecture on to undergraduate students, especially if one holds a background other than communications itself. Excitement lies in the process of discovering a ground on which interdisciplinarity can best be practiced and keep within it.
I thus consider myself lucky to have lectured on this topic while coming from a social anthropology background. I am still intrigued by the nexus of relations which can be traced and studied within internal communications.
What, however, can be even more fascinating is the possibility of communicating employee relations-as is internal communications also known- to the public: crossing the dividing line between internal and external communications. I find it fascinating as I hold a poor experience in witnessing this crossing of lines.It is one thing studying such practices, analysing them, reproducing or criticising theories and another one seeing things in action. And there is always the question: to what extent do companies really practice internal communication?  to what extent are they really interested in their human capital and its advantage? Case studies come from all sides and point to remarkable differences in the ways internal communication works to employees' (and the companies') benefits.
Within this framework, I could not but stop in front of the wall which lies behing all checkouts of a big store. I felt captured by the note: employee of the month, under which came the photographs of employees and a few personal details. There was space left for additional photographs and the line was good at length. Lacking time, I could not ask for information about the company practices and the criteria on which they nominate the employee of the month. So, I can see these photographs as enclosing longer or shorter stories of selection, nomination,some kind of small celebration taking place or announcements to other members of staff, followed up by the idea of posting peoples' photographs on a particular board and for public display.
Photographs as epitomies of workplace relations can transmit many messages to employees and to customers alike so I shall not indulge in such a query. I am only eagerly expecting to see a new face taking its place on this board : one message after all is that there is space for everyone ....



Violating sounds: Mixing Greek ....

The orthodox church of Agia Sophia in Los Angeles , seen as a socially lived place is always taking me by surprise.  I am not a regular member of the congregation, hence not fully adapted to the ways in which orthodoxy is performed, received and followed by priests and faithful orthodox people alike.

Given this condition under which I currently find myself, I go to church bearing Greek orthodox liturgies in mind and the conventions they have to follow. Any subversion of  these conventions as well as added elements-mostly met as prayers or confessions- interrupt the flow of the liturgy and expand it in time as well as in space. To be more precise, my first surprise came upon the performance of the so-called: kissing of peace: I heard the priest summoning the congregation to a confession: “Let us love one another. Christ is in our midst…”. In these words people turn to each other, hug ,kiss each other or shake hands firmly while repeating those last words.  People turn to their right, to the left and to their back. That was an expansion of the liturgy in space the fulfillment of which was a proof of the faith of the congregation and their  co-ordination with the priest’s words and deeds.

If I can further describe other surprises which I experienced in Agia Sophia church as expansions in time through the use of sounds, I would single today’s experience out as the most controversial one.

The psalt (the singer) was about to perform the apostle reading, which precedes the Gospel. My friend suddenly turned to me and said: “listen to this: he is going to read it in Modern Greek language”. I felt as if a strong sea wave had come upon me and thrust me backwards.

I listened to the reading. The language was a mixture of modern Greek with some original forms of the apostle reading (words and phrases) scattered here and there all throughout. Even though  the meaning of the  text was much clearer in this form, I found myself working not towards a translation-as I would do had the original form being read- but towards a struggle of my memory to reproduce the original version. I could not catch up with time and the psalt’s speed so I gave up. Asking for a feedback, my friend heard me saying: “I am not sure this version  is better than the original text”.

If we consider  up- to- date Modern Greek as the spoken and written version which dominated   twentieth century  to this very day, the temporal dimension is quite clearly defined. On the other hand, the liturgy was written  in an older version of the language and so were the Gospels. The space of the liturgy is the space occupied exclusively by the older version.  Each version of the Greek language has a specific space, keeps its own way and these ways are parallel to each other. They never meet.

Not until today-at least as far as I am concerned. Today, modern Greek was to replace the older version for as long as the apostle reading lasted. Modern Greek language was projected onto an older version of it. Moreover, I thought that the psalt had temporarily suspended his role:  I could hear a Greek (and not a psalt) speaking in modern Greek for some minutes and then switching to the original form of the liturgy (switching  back to his role as a psalt).  How can this be compatible with all other parts of the liturgy sung in their original form or in English?

I felt as if I had been deprived of the value of linguistic forms and versions by experiencing this expansion in time. The issue is not so much about the meaning of the text as it is about the value of the form and its  exclusive use so as  to signify a specific practice. It is, after all, a matter of keeping with the suitability of sounds in particular settings and moments.

The Greek consulate interpreted: the binding link.



 During my first week of my ph.d studies in St.Andrews, Scotland,  and while meeting with people who had just had their oral defense of their own ph.d, I became the recipient of a usual-according to anthropological standards-question: can you talk about  Greek culture? Can you see it as a whole?

Of course I can! My reply came in the most enthusiastic tone. My interlocutor was taken aback and the expression on his face showed his utmost shock! How can you do this? There is no culture seen as a coherent whole!

Well, according to my non-anthropological standards, there was! Shortly before flying to Scotland, I had read a newspaper article. It referred to Anthony Queen and his role in Zorba the Greek. The journalist ended by stressing the actor’s posture: open arms stretching to the right and the left in the usual Greek dancing style. He interpreted such a posture as the core essence of Greek culture: it encompassed and most proudly boasted Greeks’ attitude to life: “we are here and ready to deal with all ups and downs of life. We are brave and strong.”  I loved this interpretation and had this in mind when shocking my interlocutor in St. Andrews.

As soon as the course of my study unfolded ,I was to abandon this naïve attitude and view of a culture in its whole. Moreover, I was to adopt another concept in words as : fragments, vignettes, aspects… and to highlight:  pieces of, partial views of…..

This is what circumscribes anthropology in theory and practice. If one needs to see this in action, the Greek consulate of Los Angeles is an ideal place. There is no single sentence which can summarize all aspects of Greekness and attitudes met in this room: there is a variety of them: there is compliance, there is detachment, there is selectivity. The list is endless.

 Occupying a suite on the eleventh floor of a  high rising building on Wilshire Boulevard, with a spacious reception room, clients are “welcomed” by a small number of objects nicely placed all around the room, either standing or hanging on the walls. We need to interpret them as  fragments of embodied Greekness: here are symbols of the State, the Nation, its history. Here is the Greek flag, the European Flag, a shield bearing the stamp of the Greek Nation and the Greek consulate,  a photograph of the current Greek President of Democracy, pictures of ancient Greek sculptures, of  Greek Island “classic activities”(i.e: fishing) and here is an advertisement on a forthcoming exhibition. This is the visible part of the fragments of Greekness. Here is selectivity in the content of pictures and the place they are given on the walls.

Yet, there is another set of fragments: the tangible one: bureaucracy. Clients need to fill forms in, submit other forms or photocopies, show their Greek identities or passports, sign documents, collect new passports or stamped and signed forms and pay the amount due.

Entangled with paperwork is a number of attitudes which Greek migrants spontaneously display when summoned to fill forms in: there is puzzlement, phobias for making mistakes, doubts and wishes.  There is of course blame on bureaucracy for taking so long, impatience for the same reason  and there is anxiety about other processes which will  subsequently be held back.  Here is a detachment from and-at the same time- a struggle to comply with writing in Greek and in Greek ways: I saw people struggling to keep with the Greek way of writing a date- the opposite of the American way-and forcing themselves not to make mistakes.

Most of all, there is the auditory part which gives the best twist as fragment of Greekness in this room and refers to accent and vocabulary: there is Greek spoken clearly and correctly in Greek accent, there is  American accent in spoken Greek and there is a combination of Greek and English words in one sentence spoken either by men or women who have been living in this country for many years. Any anthropologist dealing with sociolinguistics will definitely find himself in a most happy moment: selection of words and phrases in Greek or in English signifies a symbolic attachment to Greekness or the effect of a life lived in the USA hence an inescapable effect of not mixing with Greeks and not speaking Greek every day? Or, is it a sign of forgetting? Is it maybe something else? How is such a selection of words seen by recipients? Is it condemned? Is it food for jokes and sarcasm?  The identity of the referee does set all this clear…

Finally, there is the socially experienced fragment, the “felt” fragment.  Greeks see other Greeks with whom they are familiar and there is a friendly chat while waiting for the documents. They catch up with each other, compare and contrast their experiences and talk about their relatives in Greece, their lives or death. Other times, random people, strangers but still Greeks engage in routine questions and answers concerning paperwork. Here is a strong feeling of attachment to family and friends at home. Here is an emerging attachment to another fragment of Greekness: ways of thinking and facing things. It suddenly feels as if all these people are not in Los Angeles but in Greece. Their commonsensical ways of commenting on life and death does seem out of place.

Employees, the majority of which are women, are admirably strict with details and rules. It is really worth noting the detail with which employees examine all documents, word for word, literally speaking. We were repeatedly told that documents and forms will delay the process, given that some of them have to be posted to Greece and back to Los Angeles. This focus on detail and accuracy is most needed when out of the country. I see it as a fortunate reversal of Greek civil servants’ attitudes to bureaucracy where speed reigns but accuracy is long lost.

While waiting, silently recording these interactions and trying not to stare at people, one has the unique opportunity of observing all such moments and  at the background, there is a busy employee managing phone calls and clients in Greek and in English.

Fragments of Greekness are practiced, imagined, visualized, spoken, felt. Greece becomes a far and a near place , past and future time, cultural practices, social relations, parents, land, buildings, inheritance… Each one of the clients displays several of these fragments to a lesser or greater extent and witnesses other people doing so.

How can we not then turn to and see the role  of bureaucracy in binding these images up? Instead of blaming bureaucracy we owe a small praise to it for giving people opportunities to publicly  unfold fragments of Greekness and, more important, allow for them to  be observed …

Words of wisdom

Symbols of and for the nation: practicing imagined communities

It has been two weeks since July 4^th and while walking along the avenues of Los Angeles I can still see small flags on the sidewalk on the dividing line between the sidewalk and the front garden of houses.  During the course of three weeks I have appointed myself with the game of observation on the flags: I first noticed them all around the area. They had been meticulously placed in front of every house: that captured my attention and sparked my enthusiasm.  I first thought of a kind of “tradition” with which people gladly keep up. But then I noticed a small piece of paper attached to the flag pole. So I took a closer look and read both sides of the paper. One side read: happy 4^th of July. The other side provided with contact details of the man in charge of the flags. If anyone wished to remove the flag, he should contact the responsible. This gave more food to my thoughts and assumptions: I thought that a civil servant was in charge or even a police officer.

I made a note of the email address and contacted the person-Chad Lund.  He gladly provided information over the phone, allowed me to take pictures of flags and use them for this post. What is at the core of this however is that  I was happy to discover an individual initiative which aimed at reinforcing peoples’ sense of belonging to this nation and celebrating the day of independence-not letting it pass by unnoticed. As I found, this private initiative started 10 years ago, after Chad’s friend suggested it and he adopted the idea. Chad pays some people to walk around and place the flags. Such a move is met with positive attitudes and a very small percentage (10 out of 8000 is a small number, he replied to me) complain or think that he is trespassing. Still, he agreed in that he aims at communicating a message to people and that is no other than refueling their “Americanness”.

If we wish to interpret this move, we can bring forward two variables. The first is about the sense of belonging to the nation. This sense is here mediated by a man: the sense of “Americaness” includes a relation between Chad and locals. We can then see Chad’s act as a practice of what is called “imagined community”. People come together, even if they cannot know each other across a country only by virtue of doing the same thing. Benedict Anderson who introduced the term in his work on imagined communities focuses on the role of Print so as to bring people together and imagine each other by reading a newspaper across the country.  In our case it is by accepting the placement of the flag and thus endorsing their sense of belonging that helps bring people closer once more. I take it as a silent convention to which both the responsible and the inhabitants adhere –the quality of relation which Chad has eventually constructed and maintained over the years with locals in the area- and that is another aspect of practicing imagined communities.

 We can definitely take another turn in interpreting these acts. We can use a second variable and that is the concept of space organization or manipulation and see how space is transformed. The two variables are inextricably liked to each other: Chad’s relation to locals is limited to placing the flags, hence getting a permission to use a fragment of the space they own and use. This fragment of space-that little corner- is however imbued with meanings and becomes a “more”, something big-to my understanding. It is big because of the practice of imagined community as I described it above.  I consider this double relationship (Chad to people and people to the nation) and its annual confirmation more important than the use of space.  At the same time  the flag itself- a symbol of the whole nation and a synecdoche already itself- is imbued with a further meaning: it is the symbolic representation of this double  relationship.

This image as seen in every single house stands for the whole of this nation. The totality (the nation) is replaced by a fragment (the flag on the corner and all inherent meanings). Let us clarify this last point by going back to Michel de Certeau and his writings on manipulation of spatial organization (The practice of everyday life, pp 100-103). The rhetoric of walking, as we have already mentioned in another post consists of two stylistic figures, one of which is asyndeton and the other is synecdoche. We are here concerned with synecdoche.  According to de Certeau: “Synecdoche consists in using a word in a sense which is part of another meaning of the same word.  In essence, it names a part instead of the whole which includes it (p.101).  Synecdoche expands a spatial element in order to make it play the role of a more (a totality) and take its place (the bicycle or the piece of furniture in a store window stands for a whole street or neighborhood). Synecdoche replaces totalities by fragments (a less in the place of a more). Synecdoche makes more dense: It amplifies the detail and miniaturizes the whole (ibid). A space treated in this way and shaped by practices is transformed into enlarged singularities (p 102).

As I kept observing the flags and contemplating on them, it all came to sharp contrast with neglected statements of Greekness as I have been experiencing them happening  in my home town, Argostoli. People used to  hang  big flags by their balconies or front  house walls. I can easily recall this kind of “ritual” starting the evening before our National days and ending the day following the celebration. Every household had its own big flag attached to a  wooden pole. Both were taken care of and kept in a convenient place inside the house all year long. The aesthetics was very pleasing: roads full of the “blue-white”- (γαλανόλευκη) as we call our flag in Greece- in full wave on a sunny October and March day. Today, only exceptions to this “tradition” can be seen: the broad image is that of non-statements: of flags not being shown in public.

I am just wondering: if few Angelinos allow flags in their private space, how many Greeks would allow for a  similar act?

The photograph on the right shows the Greek flag on the March 25th national day. It is easily seen that no other house on this side of the road bears the flag.

Can you tell by the smell?

                                   Can you tell by the smell?

My weekly  shopping  is characterized by a kind of a “ritual” to which I most happily engage when having to select  particular fruit-and a couple of vegetables- during summer time. Melons, water-melons, tomatoes and cucumbers  give a very distinct and most fine smell. Such a smell works as a sign for quality and guarantees full taste.

I had just engaged in this ritual this past Saturday morning-and obviously turned a public space into a sensory landscape, much like all customers do in a supermarket- when a lady who happened to be standing right next to me  noticed my practice and asked: “can you tell by the smell?”. I was surprised and felt as if I had been suddenly awaken by her. My “journey” to the senses was interrupted. I turned to her and replied positively: “yes, I can. See, melons, water melons and cucumbers have a fine smell. And you can tell by the smell. If there is no smell or the smell is annoying, then they are bad.” “How interesting, very interesting” she stressed in a bright face. I left her wondering and continued my shopping.

I can recall having seen, touched, smelled and eaten fresh fruit and vegetables just picked from the field when living at home. Over the years, I developed an attachment to what anthropologists call the sensory landscape. I taught myself to distinguish sweet taste from bitterness just by smelling cucumbers and while cutting them. I also learnt to distinguish sweet from non sweet melons again by smelling them. Different smells could reveal different things to me. I was led to this conclusion after tasting bitter cucumbers and tasteless melons and water melons. My first experiments to “tell by the smell” were successful, so I decided to cling on the sense of smell so as to foresee the quality of taste of raw food.

This use of senses, during which one is used for the sake of the other, is called synaesthesia. D. Sutton[1] describes the term as encompassing different relations between senses. He quotes Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1999): “From color, steam rising, gloss and texture, we infer taste smell and feel. . . .Taste is something we anticipate and infer from how things look, feel to the hand, smell (outside the mouth), and sound”.

D. Sutton, in concluding his review on works on food and the senses, advises us to turn to “everyday life and the multiple contexts in which the culturally shaped sensory properties and sensory experiences of food are invested with meaning, emotion, memory, and value”. (p 220) His article on the food and the senses emphasizes the role of the taste and refers to relations between taste and other senses.

I would here like to agree with and emphasize the fact that sensory experiences are invested with meanings and values and want to touch briefly on this by unfolding my personal relation to smell and its meanings as seen through synaesthesia. It is my conviction that people can learn to tell by the smell-even though I am fully aware of the slippery ground on which I touch, given the modern techniques of food production and consumption in urban areas in particular. Still, experimenting with the sense of smell while in Los Angeles, I found that it is safe enough a guide on which to rely.

Such an emphasis on smell does not allude to an exclusive role of memory or to a passive attachment to personal experiences (from early childhood up to a few months ago) when accessing local farms full of seasonal plants and tress and occasionally helping with the daily harvest. I do not reproduce this kind of past, nor I do not imagine it. I only use the particular sense as a form of “knowledge” in order to imagine- and somehow predict- another sense. I am drawing a causal relation between the two senses and incorporate a feeling of time: if smell is good right now, then taste will be good as soon as I consume the product. I recycle the outcome of my previous direct engagement with fruit and vegetables, I advance my own preference for smell instead of sound and I continuously test the value of smell.  

I impose an aspect of my subjectivity to the process of fruit selection thus investing smell with a specific meaning. To the extent that I prove right, the sense of smell confirms itself as an infallible guide, it invites for more trust and hence for future use and it strengthens its relation to taste. This is the meaning that I attribute to smell within the framework of synaesthesia.

  This preference can be further illustrated by the fact that I have noticed how other people seem to tell by the sound. I have seen them knocking on melons and water melons while bending over the fruit to listen to the produced sound. When first noticing this practice, it appeared very strange to me and completely unsafe to trust, so I asked my friend who engaged in this very process too. She replied that: “you can tell by the sound that the fruit is good enough and ripe or not”.

It is my belief and constant practice that we need to let “culturally shaped sensory properties” aside for a moment (if we think of them as influencing and directing individuals to specific cultural practices) and turn to subjective experiences and uses of them so as to explore  a broad nexus of relations between senses that people can draw or manipulate. By this I mean the limits, errors or new alternatives and possibilities to which they are open and thus understand how people invest them with meaning.

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[1] D. Sutton (2010): “Food and the senses”. In: Annual Review of  Anthropology,  39:209–23.

The original farmers' market in Los Angeles at 3rd Street and Fairfax: a photo essay