02 | March | 2008 | Organizations and Markets

Archive for 2 March 2008

The Urban Toilet

| Peter Klein |

That’s the title of SCA 90.001, offered this semester at New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Professor Harvey Molotch’s syllabus, writes Ben McGrath in the New Yorker, “reads almost like a parody of Allan Bloom’s worst nightmare, bringing the jargon of gender and ethnic studies, city planning, and industrial design to bear on the most euphemized of subjects.” The reading list includes

Jo-Anne Bichard, Julienne Hanson and Clara Greed, “Please Wash Your Hands.” The Senses and Society 2(3): 385-90.
Barbara Penner, “A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Women’s Public Conveniences in Victorian London.” Journal of Design History 14 (2001): 35-52.
Mitchell Duneier, “When You Gotta Go.” From Sidewalk.NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1999.
Lee Edelman, “Men’s Room,” in Joel Sanders, ed., Stud: Architectures of Masculinity. Princeton Papers on Architecture Series. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Apparently Clara Greed, of the World Toilet Organization, is a major player in the field. In class one day Molotch read aloud something by Greed about “the restroom revolution which is going on in the Far East.”

“Does she use the phrase ‘Far East’?” a young woman asked, sounding incredulous. “It’s really Western-centric, obviously.”

“O.K., so Clara stepped into that one, but she’s otherwise good on toilets,” Molotch said.

Thanks to Travis Kavulla for the pointer.

2 March 2008 at 10:50 pm Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

Religious Figures for Modern Times

| Peter Klein |

Remember Saint Hubbins, the patron saint of quality footwear? He has nothing on Lord Balaji, described in a recent WSJ story as the Hindu god of H-1B visas.

Local officials were on a tear to turn Hyderabad into the next Bangalore, the high-tech capital of the neighboring state of Karnataka. They started referring to Hyderabad as “Cyberabad.” They fixed roads and wooed Microsoft and General Electric Co. to set up offices there.

Hoping to capitalize on all the activity, technical colleges sprouted up in the city’s outskirts near Mr. Gopala Krishna’s temple. Students started trickling by on their way home from school; many complained about their failed attempts to secure U.S. visas. That gave the priest an idea to sell the students on the deity by giving him a new persona, “Visa God.” Mr. Gopala Krishna counseled the students in English, then told them to walk around the temple 11 times to get their wish. “I used to say, ‘Go, this time you’ll get it,'” he recalls.

Soon, Mr. Gopala Krishna started seeing dozens — then hundreds — of new visitors a day. In 2005, some local newspapers wrote about the Visa God, just as new U.S. visa restrictions were taking a toll. Mr. Gopala Krishna and his relatives also launched a Web site and a newsletter called Voice of Temples, with features like a primer of sample prayers for help in visa interviews.

The temple’s popularity surged. Last year, a public battle between Mr. Gopala Krishna’s family and the local government, which briefly wanted to take the temple over, only boosted its appeal among the young and subversive. Now devotees of the Visa God say they have to reach the temple by 6 a.m. to avoid the daytime rush.