{"id":120547,"date":"2018-11-30T11:28:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T16:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=120547"},"modified":"2019-02-04T17:25:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T22:25:57","slug":"what-i-mean-when-i-say-joshua-rubin-and-emergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/11\/30\/what-i-mean-when-i-say-joshua-rubin-and-emergence\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Mean When I Say: Joshua Rubin and \u2018emergence\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most of us, emergence is an act of coming forth \u2014 the emergence of a child from a hiding spot or a monster from the Black Lagoon.<\/p>\n

For Lecturer in Anthropology Joshua Rubin<\/span><\/a>, emergence is a scholarly term that \u201cdescribes processes of change that are <\/span>dramatic enough that old forms of social interaction<\/span> don\u2019t apply anymore, but new ones haven\u2019t taken shape.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lecturer in Anthropology Joshua Rubin looks at emergence, when “nobody knows quite where they stand.” (Samuel Mironko \u201921\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Emergence can happen during political revolutions, when old hierarchies and ways of acting fall by the wayside, leading people to act in unpredictable ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Russian Revolution, people stopped wearing the clothes they were expected to wear and dressed in really creative outfits,\u201d Rubin says.<\/p>\n

Emergence also happens in lower-stakes situations \u2014 like rugby matches, on which Rubin wrote his doctoral dissertation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a rugby game starts, it\u2019s emergent,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody knows what\u2019s going to happen. It\u2019s not like one of the players is orchestrating where the game is going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the moment, Rubin, whose research focuses on southern Africa, is studying another emergent situation: how artists and natural gas dealers make their livings in the years after the 2008 financial crisis in Zimbabwe, when the country experienced massive hyperinflation.<\/p>\n

In an environment of \u201cwidespread economic precarity,\u201d Rubin says, \u201cnobody knows quite where they stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

In this image by Josh Rubin, taken in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in August 2015, a large tank of propane (left) fills a customer’s home tank (right).<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a scholarly term, “emergence” can explain political upheaval, a new fashion sense, or a good rugby match. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":120566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,224],"tags":[10116],"class_list":["post-120547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-society-culture","tag-what-i-mean-when-i-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120547"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120632,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120547\/revisions\/120632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}