analysis of bathroom use as metric of social trust, courtesy Gillian Tett, Financial Times U.S. editor

Earning the key to the T-suite

By Gillian Tett

Published: November 5 2010 19:54 | Last updated: November 5 2010 19:54

A few weeks ago I was visiting an office in central New York, when I asked to use the “rest room” (aka toilet).

A receptionist handed me a vast key on a wooden board that might have been a prop from a prison drama. Then she sternly warned me to check that the rest room door was “properly locked” after use.

“Why?” I asked.

She glared at me, as if I was a simpleton.

“They are private.”

“But why?” I queried again … but received no response. No surprise, perhaps. Ever since I first lived in America a decade ago, I have been struck by the diligence with which many offices and institutions lock their toilets, particularly in cities such as New York. Americans rarely discuss this topic; after all, rest room habits seem a tad puerile. But precisely because this issue is so rarely discussed, it is rather fascinating from an anthropological view – not least because it speaks volumes about the degree of trust (or mistrust) in parts of American life.

If you walk into an office in central Tokyo you will be able to wander freely into the toilet (or toire), which is usually a delightful place, with warmed toilet seats, bountiful tissue, sparkling floors and background music (to disguise any rude sounds). If you need the “loo” in a London office, you will almost always get open access too, albeit to something rather less elegant and likely lacking loo paper. Locking up the convenience is not considered normal in Europe or Japan; or in central London.

But keys and combination codes are found in many New York offices, as well as many restaurants and gas stations. Indeed, the practice is so endemic that websites welcoming new immigrants to America include a specific paragraph explaining how to ask for the rest room key. Why?

The “official” explanation – or that proffered by those key-wielding receptionists whenever I ask – is “security”. Keeping the door locked ensures that the rest room stays “clean” and “safe”; if the door was not locked with a monster key, the implication goes, then the facilities might become soiled. Tramps could sleep there. Heavens, somebody might even nick the toilet rolls. Indeed, this reflex is so ingrained that the website of the US State Department explicitly tells American companies that “restrooms should be kept locked in high-threat environments”, with “access controlled by the receptionist”.

Perhaps that is a reasonable point to make in places such as Kabul, where there are bigger threats at stake than somebody stealing the mouthwash. But in Manhattan, the argument seems odd. After all, security in most office blocks these days is already so tight that anybody going anywhere near a locked rest room would have already been screened. Or as a lobby group with the wonderful name of the “American Restroom Association” observes: “Typically, buildings in areas where there could be a problem with misuse [of rest rooms] already have access control procedures such as a guard.”

I n my mind, the real issue at stake is social trust and cohesion. A country such as Japan has a high level of cultural homogeneity, conformity and cohesion; everybody presumes that everyone else knows how to behave “correctly”, and there are powerful unspoken social norms to enforce that. At times, this can feel oppressive; but it also creates a climate of trust. Thus, loo doors remain unlocked – and public, or semi-public, infrastructure usually stays in a sparkling state. There is toilet trust.

Places such as New York, however, have far lower levels of cohesion, informal control or mutual trust. That creates a feeling of freedom; but it also means that there is less respect towards public, common infrastructure, compared with private property. Hence the fact that the elites who work in offices feel too nervous to let strangers randomly appear in their rest rooms; keys are needed to impose control.

This makes life darn uncomfortable for anyone with a weak bladder. So much so, that the ARA (mission statement: to be an “advocate for the availability of clean, safe, well-designed public restrooms”) is now lobbying companies and institutions to start providing unlocked rest rooms. “To assure building restrooms are used only by tenants and their guests, many Companies have keyed bathroom entry, [but] unfortunately, this hindered access can be a problem for the restroom challenged,” its website earnestly declares. “After a long trip, for example, a person may desperately need to use the rest room as soon as they enter the building. If they can’t quickly find the organization they are visiting their health is compromised.”

And to further this cause, the ARA website is gathering donations (all major credit cards accepted). But while I wish it well, I doubt its chances of success. After all, current fiscal and economic pressures look set to create considerably more, not less, social friction in the coming years. Just look at the political vitriol swirling around Obama for a sign of that. Those keys, in other words, look set to stay in use, if not proliferate; low-status “outsiders” with a weak bladder had better cross their legs.

And the Magic Word is... FT article by Gillian Tett, US Editor and anthropologist

And the magic word is ...

By Gillian Tett

Published: October 29 2010 23:30 | Last updated: October 29 2010 23:30

What could “reboot” America these days? More stimulus spending? A dose of austerity? Increased quantitative easing (QE2)? Or is innovation the solution, coupled with passion and love?

That is a question I have been mulling since I flew down to New Orleans last weekend to attend a jazz-filled meeting called “Reboot America!”, organised by the glamorous Brit-turned-American journalist Tina Brown.

Fair, but now runs a hip American website, The Daily Beast. She also has an equally impressive list of friends. The participants in “Reboot America!” were like a fantasy dinner party: General Stanley McChrystal (former head of the US forces in Afghanistan) showed up; so did Diane von Furstenberg (the fashion designer), Sheila Bair (one of America’s top regulators), Vinod Khosla (the great venture capitalist), Joseph Stiglitz (the Nobel prize-winning economist) and Peter Orszag (until recently, Obama’s budget czar). Spike Lee and Richard Branson were also slated to appear but never made it.

While the attendees were eclectic, they shared at least two things. First, most agreed that America is in a mess, due to long-term structural problems as much as short-term banking woes. Indeed, as I listened to the debates in New Orleans I had a sense of déjà vu: the last time that I heard quite so much wailing about the future of a nation was in Japan, where I worked as a reporter in the late 1990s.

The second common thread was reverence for the idea of innovation. While Brown’s friends disagreed with each other over the merits of QE2 or nuclear power, almost everyone took it for granted that innovation was not just a Good Thing, but could help fix America’s troubles – particularly if combined with passionate energy. Or, as Beth Galante, an environmental activist from New Orleans declared, what was really needed was innovation and luurve.

On one level, this felt wildly exhilarating. I, for one, think innovation can be a wonderful thing if handled wisely. In other respects, it was also a trifle curious. These days, policymakers and politicians often like to sprinkle the “I” word around, mindful that innovation is not just a popular idea, but almost a quasi noble concept in America. It is baked into the American myth, like apple pie and motherhood; a near-sacred intellectual totem pole which almost everyone can rally around, be they fashion designer, bank regulator, army general or businessman.

But, as anthropologists have loved to point out, since the days of Claude Lévi-Strauss onwards, totems tend to be most potent when they are ambiguous enough to conceal contradictions. That innovation totem is no exception. If you were to ask the average person on the street to define innovation, they would probably talk about gadgets or cutting-edge science: Google, iPads, Viagra and so on. However, if you ask business people, they will often point to processes that are deceptively simple. David Neeleman, the founder of US airline JetBlue, for example, told the conference that his best innovations were putting televisions on planes and telling his staff to work at home, not in the office. In its most crude, dictionary sense, innovation is really just about embracing the new, or, for that matter, accepting change.

But while Americans might love their iPhones, many ordinary voters currently appear terrified of other forms of radical change. They don’t want their lives or communities to be turned upside down, or to lose their jobs to computers. They are wary of radical policy shifts such as Obama’s healthcare plans. And in practical terms, many innovations have had a dark side. Innovations in oil exploration have cut the price of oil; but they have also polluted the Gulf. Meanwhile financial creativity has fuelled the credit crisis – and left Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, woefully suggesting that the “only truly useful innovation” in finance in recent decades has been the invention of the ATM.

These contradictions, for the most part, are largely glossed over. Everyone continues to rally around the innovation idea. And in a world where politicians are beset by seemingly intractable problems, it seems a magical cure for ills.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not against innovation. And down in New Orleans there were plenty of inspiring stories being bandied around among the jazz, involving clever new business ideas and social processes in places ranging from Finland to Colombia. But let nobody be fooled: innovation can be a powerful totem pole but it is not a magic wand. The spirit of Google alone cannot “Reboot America!” overnight. That will require a long, hard slog from politicians and voters alike; it won’t be glamorous.

getting anthropology out there in the workforce

A link to the interview with John Fox by Chronicle of Higher Education writer Susan Basalla May was just posted to the AAA web site. I like John's observations and suggestions, and I copy a few of them here to get the discussion going among us Breaching Boundaries folks.

http://chronicle.com/article/Zigzagging-Through-the-Real/124987/

"Don’t be afraid to break out and take your unique, humanistic perspective out into the big, wide world—out where “the other” lives. I’m biased, of course, but I think a world in which anthropologists are scattered throughout the workforce—in government, nonprofits, business—would be a really great place to live."

"I still unabashedly call myself an anthropologist, even though that has not been part of my job title for many years."

And then my question to contributors: What happens if we stop calling ourselves anthropologists, taking our humanistic perspective into the big wide world without crediting our training?