Jargon in Academia and Organizing

My friend Jane recently wrote a good blog post on the importance and difficulty of communicating across various barriers.

I've been considering how to communicate across disciplines, departments, socio-economic barriers, and cultural identities.... At times, I feel like a chameleon when deciding how to speak to one person or another. What type of slang should I use? Should I cuss? Should I get out my biggest words and stand up straight? Communication is tough.

I took one of the points she made and ran with it, because it is something I have been struggling with too - how to talk about social issues as you move from academia to organizing, specifically what to do about jargon.

I posted my thoughts on Jane's group blog, but I am copying them here because I liked how it came out.

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[When out and about in the world...] My working hypothesis is only use jargon or an uncommon word when:

(1) it articulates an important concept that is not captured in another, simpler word or short phrase. Anything beyond this is jargon that shouldn't exist at all, not in academics and not in daily life.

(2) when it adds a necessary level of complexity to the topic or task at hand. Some jargon does deserve to exist, in that it captures a unique concept, but is rarely appropriate to use outside of academic treatments of a subject. Concepts that are laden with historical and structural detail are probably not worth introducing into a conversation if explaining them is not going to clarify the situation at hand. For example, you probably don't need to bring up orientalism when talking about today's immigration policy with your neighbor.

College educated social justice folks often screw up on both points because they fail to strike a balance. Most obviously they overdo it, using jargon that either shouldn't exist at all, or is inappropriate for the topic at hand.

But I want to focus on the less obvious mistake of underdoing it: dumbing things down so severely - either by censoring all uncommon words or jargon, or by oversimplifying a situation - that we fail to realistically depict the thing we are trying to communicate.

These mistakes can lead to paternalist and populist forms of engaging people. We disrespect folks by talking to them in ways that assume they are not capable of generating new and more complex thoughts, or assuming they haven't already. We do a disservice to them when we divide the world unrealistically into black and white, knowing there are shades of gray but thinking the best way to motivate others is to be harshly dualistic.

So I think we can use a little bit of jargon when engaging people if we are savvy about it. For example, it is worth making the sex/gender distinction (for those feminists who use it) when talking to a housewife about enrolling her son in gymnastics, or daughter in hockey.

The bottom line is this: the point of using any jargon should be to open up discussion, to clarify or deepen our understanding of a reality. This is in contrast to the example described by Jane, where the competitive graduate student uses it to close down discussion and obscure realities, thereby "winning" a debate or impressing others by virtue of befuddling them.

My only other thought is that we make sure to engage people conversationally, so any goofy words we want to use come up organically in response to the direction of the conversation. Too often we get into the habit of delivering mini lectures, a holdover from our socialization experience in the university classroom. And as we use any jargon, we should not assume people know what it means. Instead, volunteer to explain any concept as you bring it up, and make sure you have established an environment in which other people know they can feel comfortable interrupting you to ask for clarification. Let them know that doing so means you are being unclear, rather than that they are revealing ignorance.

Deutsche Bank's bad behavior

I first got a bad taste in my mouth for Deutsche Bank, a German-based global investment bank, back in São Paulo as the funder behind the Urban Age São Paulo conference. Upon further investigation it turns out they have an unlikely link to my home community in Ohio. Putting the two together reveals a delicious little hypocrisy that I will unfold for you here...

First to the Brazilian side: Urban Age, funded by Deutsche Bank, is a six-year series of conferences in cities across the globe designed to unite top minds around questions of our global urban future. The 2008 conference was held in and themed around São Paulo, where it faced criticism in the activist community for its elitism. The conference was invitation only, locking out civil society groups and community members who didn't have the "right credentials" even though they requested to attend. And like other swank international conferences on São Paulo urban issues, it included in-depth discussions about squatter settlements, slums, poverty and exclusion, while being both (1) entirely inaccessible to anyone living these realities, and (2) spending enough money on horsdeourves and fancy venues to lift many families out of poverty many times over.

Even the high powered Brazilian architects and urbanists who were invited to participate did so begrudgingly. While they complained in semi-private circles about the academic imperialism of the European organizers, they ultimately played ball for a chance to win the big checks Deutsche Bank hands out for research and projects.

The 2009 conference will be in Istanbul, and I just received an e-mailed "call for entries" for the 2009 Urban Age Award: a "$100,000 USD award for an outstanding project or initiative which improves the physical conditions of a community and the lives of residents in Istanbul."

Other verbage from the e-mail:

The award celebrates the Urban Age mission to connect quality of life to the quality of the urban environment. "Governing a city means managing contradictions. The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award and the Urban Age conference aim to encourage people to overcome contradictions and work together to take responsibility for their cities." – Wolfgang Nowak, Managing Director, Alfred Herrhausen Society.

and

The Deutsche Bank Urban Age award was created to encourage people to take responsibility for their cities and form new alliances.

So the themes are: innovative project, improved quality of urban life, and taking responsibility for our cities.

Wouldn't it be great if the same themes guiding Deutche Bank's Urban Age awards guided its own business practices?

Now we come to Ohio. Here the Deutsche Bank has been one of several large out-of-town banks wreaking havoc on our communities: foreclosing on properties willy-nilly and then re-purchasing them at sheriff sales, yet refusing responsibility for keeping the vacant buildings up to code so they are not a danger to neighbors. From a November 25, 2007 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

About one of every eight properties bought in Hamilton County this year was purchased at a sheriff's sale, the Enquirer analysis shows. Since 2003, the number of properties purchased by a bank or investor at a sheriff's sale and not yet resold has almost doubled - to 2,695 as of August.

Deutsche Bank National Trust purchased the most properties - 265 - this year through Oct. 31.

The German banking giant didn't own a single parcel in Hamilton County in 2004, but now is the second-largest owner of single-family homes in the county, after the federal government. The bank owned 188 properties last week, and is taking on an average of nine or 10 newly foreclosed properties each week, according to the Hamilton County Auditor's records.

And yet Deutsche Bank denies owning any houses here.

John T. Gallagher, a bank spokesman in New York City, would not comment on the bank's ownership or maintenance of properties. Instead, he issued a written statement that said the bank acts only as trustee for securitization trusts - investment pools that buy up risky subprime mortgages in bulk on Wall Street.

That position - while helping Deutsche Bank evade responsibility for maintaining properties - could put a halt to its foreclosures across Ohio.

Last month, a federal judge in Cleveland ruled that Deutsche Bank can't have it both ways: Either it owns a property, in which case it must maintain it; or it doesn't, in which case it shouldn't be foreclosing on it.

U.S. District Judge Christopher A. Boyko sharply criticized financial institutions for their handling of foreclosures. He said the banks "rush to foreclose" and then "sit on the deed, avoiding responsibility for maintaining the property while reaping the financial benefits of interest running on a judgment."

When the Deutsche bank plays absentee trustee, the financial price for maintaining the property (in some instances, ultimately demolishing it) falls on our already cash strapped local governments. Neighbors or the city end up cutting the grass, boarding the windows, sealing the doors, maintaining the facade, and clearing scrap. This same Enquirer article found the collective bill owed to the city by absentee banks for foreclosed properties totaled $201,237 at the time. Today it is surely much higher. Add this to the value lost in neighbors' homes because of vacant houses down the street, and to rising homelessness as a result of foreclosures on properties, and the damage to our communities go through the roof.

Such crimes by Deutsche Bank are found all over Ohio, not just in Cincinnati. The company owns around 970 foreclosed properties in Cuyahoga County, most of which sit vacant. And in 2007, Deutsche Bank had 14 of its foreclosures thrown out of court for failure to show it even owned the mortgage when it filed foreclosure against the homeowners. This is foreclosure fraud, plain and simple.

One community in Cincinnati is fighting back. In 2007, Price Hill saw 300 of its homes foreclosed upon. Many of those homes, and those already sitting vacant, were owned by Deutsche Bank, which subsequently refused to address the code violations that began to rack up on the vacant properties. So Price Hill Will, a local group that works to revitalize the neighborhood, is suing for damages incurred by the city and neighborhood residents. The outcome of the lawsuit is still pending.

What if the Deutsche Bank lived up to the same criteria it sets for Urban Age grant hopefuls? The bank could start an urban homesteading program for its vacant properties: if a family agreed to get the house up to code within one year, it could have the property turned over to them for a small fee (say, $100). The city could pitch in and waive the code violation fees for all properties that were granted to homesteaders.

I think I've got a proposal for their 2009 Urban Age Award here - anyone want to help me write it?