Contact Zones

Alright... I'm going to try and sort through this one, but I didn't really get the whole idea, except for the part about the kids and the baseball cards, so I'll go off of that.

Mary Louise Pratt talk about contact zones by first introducing her young son and his friend who are trying to decifer the names on baseball cards by themselves. They learned so much together from those cards that an academic setting could not have taught them in that little time. Just learning how to read the information on those cards led them to learn about history, architecture, dynamics of public space, and economics.

Also, this reading reminded me of Angus' views of democracy and the need for groups that you can discuss and debate with in public settings. These settings are where we find contact zones: people meeting and ideas clashing and forming whole new ideas in the groups.

I really don't know what else to write, but I'm going to reread over this article again and hopefully I'll understand most of it by the time we meet for class.