The political economy of rock, paper, scissors

Sometimes it occurs to me, though it is reinforced time and again in my readings, how we take for granted certain parts of our culture. What often seems self-evident is something overlooked, especially when the cultural artifact is so widely known. Nothing is so apparent than what we learn as children, such as stories or games. Rock, paper, scissors is but one example.

I'm not sure why I assumed most everybody would know about the game. It was a pervasive part of my childhood, cropping up when incredibly important decisions were needed or when consensus could not be reached. As a child, my neighborhood friends and I were prone to adventurous explorations, which sometimes required picking the kid who would wander into and check out what we perceived as dangerous territory. The deciding force behind who went first - the process that made it legitimate - was typically rock, paper, scissors.

And most Americans with whom I come into contact know this game. Hence my surprise when my friend from India acted with bewilderment when I suggested jokingly we should use a game of rock, paper, scissors to settle a decision over our reading for class. As we split up our Manuel Castells reading for our Globalized Media class, I hopped on "Geopolitics and the State"; my friend ended up with "Bolivia and Democracy," a reading she seemed unhappy about. Upon my suggestion, she politely conceded - as she is always apt to do - that she would accept the reading that she received.

However, one of our peers and I, in sensing her confusion over the game, decided to explain the rules. We went round and round for about five to ten minutes before she politely said she had it, with a slight impatient huff and a wave of her hand signaling that she felt the game absurd. Why is the paper better than the rock? Heck, I don't know.

So I began to think about it. Why is it that my friend who has been in United States for some time lacked knowledge about this game? Even more, what did the game say about Americans? The political economy aspect of this game occurred to me as I read through the readings for my classes this week; however, the search for information is always a good place to begin.

I am quite sure if I had an overabundance of leisure time, I would devote that time to more constructive endeavors and not rock, paper, scissors. However, I will say as I entered the term into the Google engine and clicked "search", almost a million web pages came up. I went through several, and found several explanations of the game. I even found the website for the World Society of RPS, a factoid that I probably could have lived without. I also found our symbolic representations of our symbolic representations enlightening and amusing. For example, check out this graphic explanation of the rules from corkinthewater:




Or this beer commercial:


You can visit this website for more information.

I can imagine one would feel a bit of cultural vertigo from experiencing the game without a context by which to understand it. And in rethinking my knowledge of the game, as well as its meaning, I wondered how it related to the perplexing problems arising from decision making and resource distribution. It occurred to me those who possessed the better resources came out on top, and coming out on top depends on choosing the resource that bests your opponent.

The political economy of the game hit me as I perused the pages of my reading. Most of our globalization and international communication theory has dealt with the growth and decline of American media around the world, as well as the idea that capitalism was the engine behind the globalization phenomena. These two ideas - the spread of communications, particularly communications technology and content, and the spread of capitalism - are fused and expounded by Benedict Anderson in his argument about the development of nationalism. It was, argues Anderson, the spread of print capitalism that broke the hold of religious power and facilitated the growth of state mechanisms. Essentially the power of knowledge helped loose the chains of cognitive bondage, and began to place power into the hands of more people.

If I could re-imagine the game within the current media logic, the concept of scissors would include so much more than simply banned books or censorship. Once unpacked, it would also signify our cut-and-paste, fast-paced misinformation society. For the ability to evade and twist reality seems now much more potent than ever before. At some point we should come to understand that the one resource mightier than any weapon is the power of knowledge, especially coupled by the power of imagination. The one exception resides in the power to keep our fellow man ignorant.

And with that, I will leave you with this YouTube video by uphillbothways as an amusing sidebar: