White throated sparrow: Harbin's singularity (Kopytoff), commodification and its (counter-)culture, Harbin is a successful Hot Springs' Business

Harbin ethnography:


... It's this singularity that I hope to observe and interpret as Harbin's milieu emerges in virtual Harbin.

Vis-a-vis Harbin's singularity (Kopytoff), commodification and its (counter-)culture, while Harbin is a successful Hot Springs' Retreat Center business (last week when I visited, Harbin as a business just seemed to me to be humming along) these days, Harbin's location – its place – and culture make it unique. It's also a kind of not-a-commune Hippie commune, where, due to the abundance of water flowing out of the ground, its beauty, and a large number of somewhat Bohemian-minded visitors coming through the gate, in an unbroken stream since at least the mid-1960s, when it was briefly and nominally Harbinger University, a psychedelic university, life is easy there for residents and visitors alike. And although there is a 'management structure' by which decisions are made, Harbin is pretty funky in this respect, as well, and it all works as if by itself, with a very, very distributed hierarchy. The founder, Ishvara, who still lives at Harbin, has most significantly influenced this vision, simply because he's been there continuously since 1972, and, in a sense, been able to say no (not easy at Harbin), occasionally, through the years, and the other longest-term residents have been there since the 1980s. Harbin is very singular, indeed.


While values-free representation in social science ...

















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/07/white-throated-sparrow-harbins.html - July 6, 2010)