Haleigh Gershon The Break Up 2.1 Summary

Writing Exercise #1 by Haleigh Ammon
According to Gershon, second-order information is defined as “Not what is actually said but rather the background knowledge of a situation and expectations of communication that allows one to interpret words.” (2010: 123) Second-order information is extremely malleable because, depending on the context that it is in, its meaning can change entirely. That’s why second order-information is so important to pay attention to and understand, especially if the stakes of misinterpreting it are high, as you will see in the following two examples.
Gershon’s “The Break Up 2.0” focuses particularly on how second-order information acts via breaking up through social media sites. Second-order information is extremely
important, and very confusing, when it comes to communicating via the Internet. There is no interaction, no facial expressions or body messages to help the receiver of understanding better what is being said. So the information, such as things learned in the past, that you are able to still draw upon when deciphering symbols on the Internet is extremely important. Gershon meets with a young woman to talk about how this process happens in her own life on the web and she explains a certain incident in particular that she remembers. Her and her boyfriend had been fighting and there was a chance they would break up, so when he went to her profile and saw a video of “Get Another Boyfriend” by The Backstreet Boys had been posted on her wall, he got extremely angry. The words of this video warned him that this was not a good sign, but then as he recalled more second-order information such as the fact that the person who posted this video on her wall has feelings for his girlfriend, he became even angrier. Had he known some other second-order information about this video, maybe that it was his girlfriend’s all-time favorite song and that she was going to see the Backstreet Boys this month at concert, he would not have been concerned at all. The context that goes with the message being sent can completely change the meaning depending on the second-order information.
Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist focused on inner-city poverty, realized the same thing about second-information relying on context as Gershon when he relocated to East Harlem in order to fully immerse himself in the culture he was studying. He wanted to break down the barriers between himself and the culture of poverty. But he found it was extremely difficult because of second order information. “Busy street corners emptied amidst a hail of whistles whenever I walked by as nervous drug dealers scattered in front of me, certain that I was an undercover narcotics agent” (Bourgois 2002: 19). A white middle-class male walking down a street means very little to nothing of any importance in most places in America, but in context of the culture that is East Harlem Bourgois is extremely dangerous to the residents. Mainly consisting of crack dealers and thugs, the white middle-class male they have most often interacted with were police. And in their business, police were no friends of theirs. The second-order information that came off of Bourgois (the fact that he was white, dressed decently, and spoke articulately) paired with the background information that the residents had learned in the past helps them decipher the message that they think is being sent. They are looking out for themselves and each other by whistling and warning each other that, based on past experiences, they should be careful. Without understanding second-order information and stereotyping people as they did with Bourgois, they would be much more susceptible to getting in trouble. They would not know that they were going to be arrested for their illegal work until after the police caught them. Second order information is vital to these crack dealers in order to continue to strive in the environment that they are in.
But second order information is interpreted differently based on the person and their background.
The white police saw Bourgois walking down the street in East Harlem and, unlike the crack dealers, the police believed that “the only reason for a “white boy” to be in the neighborhood after dark was to buy drugs” (Bourgois 2002: 19). Based on the police’s prior experiences and basic understanding of who Bourgois was stereotypically, they used that second order information to make an assumption about Bourgois.
Sometimes, like with the crack dealers, second-order information is used as a self-defense mechanism. Other times, like with the boyfriend attempting to decipher Facebook wall posts, it is used to help understand better the situation that they are in in. There are many different ways it can be used as a tool because second-order information functions differently based on the context that the person receiving the information is in, as proved above.
Symbols are how we communicate with one another. A word, an object, a hand gesture – they are all arbitrary symbols that have meaning behind them. But there is no universal meaning, no matter how clearly translated, of these symbols because of the cultural dimension that is inherently within them. Both of my examples of symbols are similar in that they do not have the same meanings when looked at universally, although one encourages different interpretations whereas the other symbol attempts to prove a certain meaning of its
culture.
Bohannan, at the beginning of his writing, felt extremely convinced that, when translated correctly, all symbols had one universal meaning. He was in Africa studying the anthropology of a tribe when he attempted to prove his theory. Bohannan entered the room of all his friends and told them the story of Hamlet. As he was telling the story, the men began to interpret things differently. At first it was small things such as the translation of the word scholar, which happened to be affiliated with the word “witch” in their culture. And another instance when Hamlet scolded his mother, the tribal men were taken aback. They had heard and understood the same words as Bohannah did, but to them it meant a different thing. A man was never to scold his mother, which may seem normal in Bohannah’s culture. And another time when Hamlet married his dead brother’s wife, one of the negative points for Hamlet in Bohannah’s eyes, the Africans think that he had done well. The marriage of a man and his widowed sister-in-law was normal in their culture.
All of the words from Hamlet had been said and translated correctly, yet the story changed completely. Near the end, the men even become offended by Bohannah’s version of Hamlet and her refusal to accept their way as the truth. In the end one of the old men go as far as to say,
“Sometime,” concluded the old man, gathering his ragged toga about him, “you must tell us some more stories of your country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom. [Bohannah 2000: 5]
Symbols are very different in context, as Bohannah quickly learned, and there is no one universal meaning for these arbitrary symbols because of this.
Similarly, De Leon, an anthropologist studying the illegal Mexican immigrant border-crossing of the Arizona Desert, finds that not all symbols are universal either.
He collected and studied objects that the immigrants used while trying to cross the border. One pair of shoes that a woman had was completely demolished. To the average person in the US, it looks as though someone purposefully ripped apart the shoe until you look closer. The top part of the shoe is falling off completely, and there is a bra strap wrapped around it in an attempt to keep it together. Something like that is what De Leon says would “suggest desperation”. The bra strap mending hints at a larger story that is behind the shoe. Just like Bohannah did with the story of Hamlet, any given person would simply assume that this shoe looks like this because it was worn. There would only be one meaning (it being worn) and there would be no further discussion. But the story that is behind this symbol makes it different from that of a shoe that a person in the US might see laying on the street. It is no longer simply the surface level culture that is behind the shoe, like the story of Hamlet was with the African tribe, this shoe tells the viewer of the political, economical, and social standing of the person who wore it. In context, you discover that people who could afford shoes when crossing the border are luckier than others. The bra strap also tells you that the person was resourceful. Because they were so desperate to get to the other side that they would ruin an article of their clothing simply to hold their shoe together suggests that their desperation is higher than that of others who would have just turned around if they ran into trouble.
De Leon talks of these symbols at an even deeper level.
He concludes that,
Moreover, this suffering may leave no physical trace at all or become buried in water bottles, shoes and other items left behind. These objects can tell us a great deal about what happens in the desert, and we diminish their voices when we reduce them to mere ‘trash’. [De Leon 2013: 341]
Not only are these symbols, he says that they are voices. These are the messages left by the people who attempt to leave their homeland in order for a better life in America. With each one of these pieces of “trash” there is a story of extremely hard times that is original to each individual artifact. The message that comes with each of these symbols provides researchers with more depth and understanding then they may have been able to get from the individual by communicating verbally. Without symbols like these, the culture of these people and their travels may have never been communicated. Their stories rely on the symbols that prove that their words are
true.
The symbols in De Leon’s writing are much different than Bohannah’s because the objects are literal proof of the monstrosity people went through by trying to flee from Mexico. Whereas the symbols of words through text in Hamlet are the exact opposite, they are not proof of any real thing – they are a piece of art that are meant to be debated and will be debated because of the thousands of different cultures and mindsets that people have.
Whether or not a symbol is up to debate or attempting to prove, they would be incapable of having any type of different cultural interpretation without second-order information; which is why I chose to write about both of these topics.

Works Cited

Bohannan, Laura
2000 Shakespeare in the Bush In Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers. Eds. Paul Escholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s Press: 1-5.

Bourgois, Philippe
2002 Understanding Inner-City Poverty: Resistance and Self Destruction under U.S. Apartheid. In Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines. Jeremy MacClancy, ed. Pp. 15-32. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

De León, Jason
2013 Undocumented migration, use wear, and the materiality of habitual suffering in the Sonoran Desert. Journal of Material Culture 18 (4): 321-345.

Gershon, Ilana
2010 The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.