23 February 2022. Complaints |
How complaints expose the inner workings of organisations.
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1: How complaints expose the inner workings of organisations
I mentioned Sara Ahmed’s book Complaint! here a few days ago, noting that following complaints through an organisation was a brilliant research method for identifying what organisations did, as opposed to what they said they did. It happens that there’s a long and sharply written review of the book by Ena Gunaydin at the Sydney Review of Books which helps understand all of this better.
Sara Ahmed is an academic who has made a career of researching single words. Complaint! looks at complaints within higher education institutions; this is effectively deep qualitative, or anthropological research.
Ahmed, in choosing to follow the trajectory of largely unconnected complaints – most of which, cannily or uncannily, follow the same invisible script – has tapped into the veins of the modern university. The book resonated in big and small ways... Ahmed discusses the punitive grading criteria applied to work that discusses topics like race or gender and how gatekeepers obstruct the career progression of scholars from non-traditional backgrounds. She describes an incident where an on-campus mixed-gender knitting club was taken as a sign of subversion, on the grounds that it was attempting to create a women’s space. I laughed, having disagreed with a male colleague about this exact phenomenon only days before.
Hence: complaints take us into the workings of the institution, and in a particular way. They expose the things that the institution says matter to it which, in practice, don’t matter at all. She describes these as ‘non-performative’:
The non-performative refers to ‘institutional speech acts that do not bring into effect what they name’. Ahmed identifies the non-performative in complaints and grievance policies that do not exist to be enforced. Many complainers learn the hard way which rights are not meant to be sought – the ones that only the naïve, entitled or overly credulous would seek. These include policies against sexual harassment, discrimination, or even the rights to job security and to be paid for all work done.
One of the features of the non-performative is that organisations introduce policies that are, at least as far as the text goes, designed to address issues raised through complaints, even though the policies are not implemented. And although the book is about the university, we’ve all worked for organisations with non-performative policies. Just as we’ve talked to the marginalised person who has been marginalised because they have tried to get the organisation to behave as if these policies were meaningful.
In restricting her enquiry to universities, though, Ahmed is also making making an observation about the way institutions work: context matters:
to study complaint is to reveal the workings, and make visible the contours, of the institution. Ahmed approaches institutions as immanent: they are reproduced moment to moment. This understanding opens up space to consider how they may be altered or interrupted in the same breath. Ahmed argues that complaints possess a destructive quality: they are a metaphorical loose cannon, a scattergun, a boat that is either rocking or about to be subsumed by waves.
And what of the complainer? Ah, those spoilsports, interrupting the moment, breaking the flow:
I think of the times I have complained; I think of the complainers, moaners and whiners I know. And I know that what we have in common is that, in those moments, we have caused something to halt. We have interrupted the fun, fecund, sexy flow of the moment. Ahmed notes that complainers are often deemed nags and hags: the two key categories of unfuckable person.
But in this world there are also people who use complaint as a strategy: it’s not always right to side with the complainer. Gudayin notes the example of the student who complains about grades because they think of themselves as a ‘customer’, or the ‘girlboss’ who complains about sexism to clear their career path. “Complaint is a hall way of mirrors”.
A distinction should be drawn, then, between those for whom complaint is a sacrifice – an interruption to one’s career, an alienation of one’s colleagues and friends, a risk to one’s safety and security, a possible final act before one is driven out of an institution entirely – and those for whom complaint is a shield. No obvious way for drawing such a distinction exists, however, and I am of the belief that the identity of the complainer is rarely a good litmus test.
And sometimes we might think about complaining but decide against. There’s a lot of labour in such processes, and often quite a lot of cost as well. Complainers, after all, “risk social marginalisation by whining”. But we need them, says Ahmed, for two reasons. One of these is that complainers can create a sense of collectivity in institutions that have become increasingly individualised.
The other:
complainers can open the space for the rest of us. If a few of us each take a turn at scratching at the door, then we mark its surface, creating the possibility of a new inheritance for the institution, a more faithful one. Ahmed closes the book with the words, ‘a complaint can open a door for those who came before’.
2: Energy drinks are bad for teenagers
Who knew, but it turns out that caffeinated energy drinks are bad for teenagers. And it also turns out that teenagers from households with lower incomes are more likely to drink them, compounding disadvantage.
I’m indebted to the British newspaper the Independent for this. They published a long story going through the evidence, taken from a metastudy published in BMJ Open. In the paper, the researchers say:
Frequent drinking (5 or more days per week) was associated with low psychological, physical, educational and overall well-being. Evidence from reviews and datasets suggested that boys drank more than girls, and drinking was associated with more headaches, sleep problems, alcohol use, smoking, irritability, and school exclusion.
And teenagers are significantly more likely than the rest of us to drink this stuff, according to research by Mintel carried out in 2021:
54 per cent of 16- to 19-year-olds drink energy drinks, compared with an average of 31 per cent of Britons overall. This is despite worrying about the negative effects: 66 per cent of those teenagers were concerned they had trouble sleeping.
It’s one of those bits of research that—when you pause for a moment and step back from it—makes you wonder how all of this has come to be normalised in 21st century food environments.
Some supermarkets already ban the sale of such drinks to under-16s, and its possible that the government will make this law. We’re talking about drinks like G Fuel or Bulldog Power, which typically combine both caffeine and sugar.
Source: Open Food Facts)
Although there’s mounting anecdotal evidence, and increasing survey evidence, it’s hard to link cause with effect. The BMJ researchers say that a randomised controlled trial, which might help clarify causality, would be unethical, and suggest some kind of longitudinal research to track effects over time. (Although there’s ethical issues here as well).
Among the anecdotal evidence, the article quotes a teacher:
One sixth-form teacher, who works at a boys’ grammar school, says: “Pupils drink energy drinks plus espresso in the morning to get them going. A lot of teenage boys really struggle to get up early enough for school. This is unfortunately how quite a few of my older students manage. I had one Year 13 boy last year who physically shook in our morning registration.”
This, of course, links to another well-known but ignored problem; that school hours are completely unsuited to teenage brains and bodies.
But it’s not surprising that a student might be shaking:
A 500ml can of energy drink can contain 20 teaspoons of sugar and the same amount of caffeine as two cups of coffee.“Regular use of energy drinks has been linked to headaches, sleeping problems, anxiety and behavioural changes, likely caused by caffeine. The sugar content may also contribute to calorie intakes and increase the risk of tooth decay,” says (nutrition scientist Helena) Gibson-Moore.
The global consensus among regulators is that these drinks aren’t good for children, precisely because of the caffeine in them. The UK Food Standards Agency recommends that young people should drink caffeine ‘in moderation’.
And fortunately the British Soft Drinks Association is completely onside with all of/ this. It told the Independent that its members do not market or promote energy drinks to under-16s. So I’m guessing that they’re not going to complain when if the government does ban their sale to this age group.
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