Is this a parody, or what? (I haven’t read it all that closely.)
http://www.sociology.org/content/vol004.002/diaz.html
It begins as an ethnography about people who sell plasma, but degenerates into… well, you just look.
It is strange. I can only assume that it is fiction in the tradition of “War of the Worlds.”
Uhhh you do realize that was posted in the April issue of their magazine, so I’d vote for an April fool’s joke.
Chickenhead-
You’re right. That was some straaaaaange, if entertaining, stuff. The author comes out at the beginning and says that he is using a “postmodern” approach to his story, which normally involves a multiplicity of viewpoints. This ummm…whatever it is…certainly has that. My immediate guessis that it is fiction. If the author’s intention was to re-create “War of the Worlds,” he failed. WotW was extremely realistic (by the standards of the day) and was unrelenting in it’s clinical reporting of bizarre events. This (article?) doesn’t do that. It quickly delves into the subjective, which, IMHO, is one of the reasons postmodernism has limited usefulness in science.
I enjoyed reading it, though. If it was fiction, it was rather refreshing.
Or, hey, it might’ve been an April Fool’s joke.