Sociology. History. Where to Put the Blanket.
On an unbearably hot day in August you arrive at the beach - Jones Beach, Santa Monica Beach or any other beach - and you see in front of you uncountable blankets, umbrellas and people arranged in an unfathomable pattern, or no pattern at all.
Where to put your blanket? How to negotiate a small city with no sidewalks, no streets, no property boundaries, when you can't even figure out whether the anxiety you feel is claustrophobia or agoraphobia? At times like this I long for an evidence-based approach to beach-blanket site acquisition and defense. Don't you?
How do you decide whether there's enough room between two family groups? How can you tell in advance who is going to kick sand or indulge in inappropriate public displays of affection? What is the optimal search pattern for open space? Astronauts were better prepared for a moon walk than we are for a beach walk. One small step for a man, then another small step for a man, and another.
We ought to be able to come up with some answers. In one sense the beach is a human invention. Of course there have always been beaches in the geological sense, but it wasn't until the 18th century that trendsetters like King George III of England (the one who lost the colonies) began to favor bathing in the sea as a healthy activity.
Alain Corbin, a French intellectual who has written about odors, the senses, cannibalism and other topics, described the general change in the European attitude toward the boundary between sea and land in "Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside, 1750-1840."
Other historians have also noted that the interest in sea bathing was part of an increased interest in bathing in general. Apparently, there were hundreds of years when no one in Europe took a bath, let alone packed up the oxcart to take the kids to the shore. Once royalty dived in, it was a mere historical hop, skip and jump to the Jersey Shore.
In the 1970's and 80's, American social scientists who were thinking about crowds, personal space and behavior in public places cast their gaze on the beach. In 1979 Robert B. Edgerton published "Alone Together: Social Order on an Urban Beach." Jack D. Douglas published "The Nude Beach (Sociological Observations)" in 1977.
Researchers contemplated the arrangement of ethnic and social groups on given beaches and, in fact, the actual arrangement of blankets. In 1981 Dr. Herman W. Smith, now retired from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, published a paper called, "Territorial Spacing on a Beach Revisited: A Cross-National Exploration," in Social Psychology Quarterly.
Germans claimed the largest territory. The French did not seem to grasp the idea of laying claim to an area of public space. Dr. Smith did not make any comparison to geopolitics, and I won't either.
Dr. William Kornblum, a sociologist at City University of New York and author of "At Sea in the City," a book about sailing New York's waterfront, studied beach use in the 1970's and 80's for the National Park Service. In an interview, he said ethnic and racial conflicts sometimes erupted on beaches when groups that usually lived apart found themselves in close proximity. Race riots in Chicago in 1919 started on a beach, he said.
Although the study of people in public places continues, he went on, he is not aware of any rising tide of beach interest or new research on patterns of blanket placement.
As a side thought, Dr. Kornblum said that he had always thought that the millions of trips to the beach each summer represented "one of the great mammalian migratory patterns."
After I spoke to Dr. Kornblum, I started thinking that there might be another approach to discovering the rules of beach blanket placement. Perhaps the problem is mathematical. Maybe we're like M&M's. Mathematicians are always studying the packing of M&M's. Candies do not make conscious, deliberate decisions, of course. But maybe we don't either. Maybe we simply collect and disperse in a kind of Brownian motion.
This suggests a non-ego, non-evidence-based strategy. You are not a sweaty, tired person hoping against hope for a quiet spot in the crowd. You are a grain of sand, a drop in the sea of humanity. You don't need some fancy rational strategy. Be the blanket. Let the space choose you. Get over yourself.
Or, as the noted Texas Buddhist and country singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote in one of his songs, using a seaside metaphor of sorts: "Babe, you're just a wave. You're not the water."
On an unbearably hot day in August you arrive at the beach - Jones Beach, Santa Monica Beach or any other beach - and you see in front of you uncountable blankets, umbrellas and people arranged in an unfathomable pattern, or no pattern at all.
Where to put your blanket? How to negotiate a small city with no sidewalks, no streets, no property boundaries, when you can't even figure out whether the anxiety you feel is claustrophobia or agoraphobia? At times like this I long for an evidence-based approach to beach-blanket site acquisition and defense. Don't you?
How do you decide whether there's enough room between two family groups? How can you tell in advance who is going to kick sand or indulge in inappropriate public displays of affection? What is the optimal search pattern for open space? Astronauts were better prepared for a moon walk than we are for a beach walk. One small step for a man, then another small step for a man, and another.
We ought to be able to come up with some answers. In one sense the beach is a human invention. Of course there have always been beaches in the geological sense, but it wasn't until the 18th century that trendsetters like King George III of England (the one who lost the colonies) began to favor bathing in the sea as a healthy activity.
Alain Corbin, a French intellectual who has written about odors, the senses, cannibalism and other topics, described the general change in the European attitude toward the boundary between sea and land in "Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside, 1750-1840."
Other historians have also noted that the interest in sea bathing was part of an increased interest in bathing in general. Apparently, there were hundreds of years when no one in Europe took a bath, let alone packed up the oxcart to take the kids to the shore. Once royalty dived in, it was a mere historical hop, skip and jump to the Jersey Shore.
In the 1970's and 80's, American social scientists who were thinking about crowds, personal space and behavior in public places cast their gaze on the beach. In 1979 Robert B. Edgerton published "Alone Together: Social Order on an Urban Beach." Jack D. Douglas published "The Nude Beach (Sociological Observations)" in 1977.
Researchers contemplated the arrangement of ethnic and social groups on given beaches and, in fact, the actual arrangement of blankets. In 1981 Dr. Herman W. Smith, now retired from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, published a paper called, "Territorial Spacing on a Beach Revisited: A Cross-National Exploration," in Social Psychology Quarterly.
Germans claimed the largest territory. The French did not seem to grasp the idea of laying claim to an area of public space. Dr. Smith did not make any comparison to geopolitics, and I won't either.
Dr. William Kornblum, a sociologist at City University of New York and author of "At Sea in the City," a book about sailing New York's waterfront, studied beach use in the 1970's and 80's for the National Park Service. In an interview, he said ethnic and racial conflicts sometimes erupted on beaches when groups that usually lived apart found themselves in close proximity. Race riots in Chicago in 1919 started on a beach, he said.
Although the study of people in public places continues, he went on, he is not aware of any rising tide of beach interest or new research on patterns of blanket placement.
As a side thought, Dr. Kornblum said that he had always thought that the millions of trips to the beach each summer represented "one of the great mammalian migratory patterns."
After I spoke to Dr. Kornblum, I started thinking that there might be another approach to discovering the rules of beach blanket placement. Perhaps the problem is mathematical. Maybe we're like M&M's. Mathematicians are always studying the packing of M&M's. Candies do not make conscious, deliberate decisions, of course. But maybe we don't either. Maybe we simply collect and disperse in a kind of Brownian motion.
This suggests a non-ego, non-evidence-based strategy. You are not a sweaty, tired person hoping against hope for a quiet spot in the crowd. You are a grain of sand, a drop in the sea of humanity. You don't need some fancy rational strategy. Be the blanket. Let the space choose you. Get over yourself.
Or, as the noted Texas Buddhist and country singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote in one of his songs, using a seaside metaphor of sorts: "Babe, you're just a wave. You're not the water."
posted by Aki at
11:13 AM
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