When a Sociology Student Enters a Barbershop
The pandemic has changed our life. Concerts, soccer games, exhibitions, most of my entertainments were long gone in Vienna to keep the 7-day incidence low.[1] Shops were closed and reopened due to inconsistent lockdown rules. For a sociology student, ‘society’ was somehow suspended from my life, and what was left were my courses and readings. The good news to me, who urgently needed a reason to leave my poky room, was that barbershops were still operating cautiously: entry was allowed with an appointment plus a negative COVID-19 test result.
As a regular customer, not much had changed when I stepped into the Chinese barbershop near Naschmarkt in mid-January except for an FFP-2 mask on everyone’s face.[2] The barber, a middle-aged man from southeast China, was doing his job deftly on the head of his customer with his apprentice sweeping the ground. The television in the barber’s was loud as usual, playing “TVBS Sisy’s World News” for the customers waiting on the sofa.[3] I picked a sofa at the corner, comfortably placed my body, and started browsing Twitter on my smartphone.
However, it would never occur to me that we, the four people who had not known each other well before, could engage ourselves in an hour-long conversation regarding Donald Trump, his foreign policies, and his impeachment in this barbershop. Though I am not a specialist in politics, I was invited to talk as a “panelist”.
How could a barbershop be transformed into a room for politics? And what can we learn from the stay at the barbershop?
As a sociology student, I could hardly dismiss Jürgen Habermas from my mind when such political conversation began in a public area. Habermas’ most prominent work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), points out the role the public sphere plays in the road to modernity. Feudalism prevailed in Europe before the rise of capitalism. Feudal lords held all political and material resources, and thus forming a representative public sphere — ordinary people were represented by the lords and had no access to public matters. Later, due to the rise of early capitalist orders, feudalism was replaced by constitutional orders. Bildungsbürger, the “educated citizens,” emerged in Europe. They met in salons and participated in discussions of social and political matters. The second transformation of the public sphere took place in the 20th century. Industrialization enabled mass production and created a consumer society. As Habermas observed, the establishment of commercial society was accompanied by the blurred lines between the public and the private. The previous bourgeois public sphere dissolved, and new social dynamics featured by mass media and consumerism led to a less rational public sphere. In this book, Habermas addressed issues on the formation of the public sphere, the members of public spheres, and the social and political impact of public spheres. However, he did not discuss some microscopic issues, such as how a conversation could occur in a barbershop where nobody knows each other. Who starts the talk? How do people share their thoughts?
Conversations rarely happen among people with no connections. The first few minutes after I sat down on the sofa, none of us said anything. We all listened to Sisy hosting her channel from the television, talking about the riots in the Capitol and the charges Trump faced. Then the silence among us four was broken by the words of the barber after Sisy mentioned Trump in contempt: “Europe would be happy to see the States losing its international influences during Trump’s term. The States is now a joke, and I’d like to see Trump stay to see more jokes.” His words were soon rebutted by one of his customers: “Man, you have been in Europe for some time! Look at Austria! Is the state functioning better than the deteriorated America, economically and politically? You know that in your heart! Europe has lost its economic superiority, and even China looks better.” Their voices got louder and louder, and I could no longer follow Sisy talking.
The role Sisy played in the conversation was crucial. Though she was not physically present in the room, she was the fifth participant in the whole conversation. Almost all segments of our dialogue started with either her presenting the facts or her analysis of the case in the TV show. A moderator facilitates a good discussion, and Sisy was the moderator in the barbershop even though her TV show was recorded a few days before my barbershop visit. She could not control where the conversation would go and could not observe how the debate got heated in the barbershop, but she was the one providing the discursive foundation in plain language: scorning for Trump’s political failure.
This gives an example of how previously unconnected people can start creating connections and conversations in a public sphere. The topics discussed in this public sphere are not random ones. They are directed by those who actively engage in specific issues, be it American politics or the Austrian economy. The ongoing conversations are structured around a discursive foundation. Like a street-corner debate, some argue for the discursive foundation, and others go against it. But one question remains unanswered. If the public sphere is about presenting ideas and coming towards a collective claim as Habermas wrote, what techniques are featured to make an impressive argument?
Discussion in a barbershop is not a scientific report where reason dominates passion. In the barbershop discussion, the moderator and the “panelists” must speak in plain language so that the audience can understand their claims. Logical propositions and long, boring argumentations will lead the conversation to nothing but embarrassment. To argue against what his customer said, the barber referred to the life of his close relative who owns a barbershop in the United States. Describing the life story as “miserable,” the barber presented his evidence for difficult lives in the States: taxation, problematic health care system, and a new round of Yellow Peril during the pandemic. He compared the miserable life of his relative with his comfortable life in Vienna, and thus concluded that the U.S. political and social system was worth being criticized. Emotion and empathy mattered in his short speech. The barber wanted his audience to feel the pain of living in the States, and to make the emotional appeal stronger, he made a drastic contrast and purposefully concealed the possible difficulties of living in Europe as a Chinese immigrant.
This story created an echo chamber when the barber’s apprentice added another story of his cousin. Different protagonists, similar experiences. Interestingly, though the apprentice was apparently on the barber’s side in the conversation, Mr. Donald Trump, the spotlight of Sisy’s show, was missing. The apprentice did not further support the barber’s argument with facts and logic, but he contributed to the impressiveness of the barber’s story by sharing another miserable life story.
Their voices went louder and louder. Comfortable life in Europe? I started smiling. I did have a story to tell, a story about me being racially discriminated against in a shopping mall in Budapest because of my skin color. However, at that moment I was not in the conversation among the barber, his apprentice, and his customer. And it was after a short silence when I got their invitation to join the chat. The barber and his apprentice were looking at me. Maybe it was the smile on my face, or it was my coincident eye contact with the barber. They recognized my interest in their stories, and they were expecting my ideas. To discredit their stories, I subconsciously started my story with “I know a friend in Budapest…”
Although I did not purposefully use this “I have a friend” technique, I tried to highlight the mental breakdown of my protagonist. “He no longer dines in the KFC where he was discriminated against,” I said. I was not sure whether my story was convincing enough, but I saw the barber nodding his head. Maybe the story meant something for him, or maybe not. At least he was attracted by my story.
Our discussion in the barbershop, after I shared my story, detoured to whether life in Europe was comfortable instead of direct comments on the politics of Donald Trump. The detour started from the barber’s story and ended up with more stories. The participants of such a conversation did not offer arguments. Instead, they contextualized their arguments through stories. Contextualizing is about creating the right distance between the teller and the audience, and this “I have a friend” discourse is very efficient in bringing the emotion and empathy of audiences into the public sphere. Indeed, it does not matter whether I had a friend in Budapest, whether this poor friend was discriminated against by the local extremists, or whether I was exaggerating his misery. An argument in this public sphere is not credited by how authentic or logical the story sounds, but by how well the audiences could resonate with the discourse.
Participating in such panels outside of university is beneficial for a sociologist under training. The sociological classroom could take place in a barbershop, at the counter of a Chinese supermarket, or in front of a snack bar. Random occurrence, loosely choreographed conversations. They offered me what books and academic papers could not: fresh stories without the burden of jargon and theories. These stories might not be true, and they might be forgotten quickly if they did not contribute to my academic work, but they have given me a sense of being in society and a chance to reflect on what I’ve learned in the classroom.
Notes:
[1]. The 7-day incidence, or 7-Tage Inzidenz in German, is used to monitor the severeness of the COVID-19 infection rate in Europe. It measures the number of COVID cases per 100,000 residents in a given area.
[2]. Naschmarkt is the largest market in Vienna’s city center, around which you will find Chinese supermarkets, restaurants, barbershops, and other groceries.
[3]. See “TVBS 文茜的世界周报” on YouTube.
Leiyi Lin is an NYU Shanghai Alumnus and incoming Ph.D. of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Vienna.
