Archive for the ‘ Ideology ’ Category

Economy 3.0

Douglas Rushkoff recently presented a fifteen minute talk entitled Radical Abundance. The basic premise is intriguing. The introduction of government monopolized currency in the Middle Ages was a technique for keeping power in the hands of the aristocracy, since it gave them control over the relative scarcity of currency and thus the ability to extract [ READ MORE ]

Localism

A&L Daily has a couple of articles today on localism. One, by Joel Kotkin, suggests that Americans are becoming less geographically mobile. The second, a defense of Christopher Lasch’s thought by Russell Arben Fox, that implies that society requires an essentially religious belief in the ability and will of highly localized populations to organize for [ READ MORE ]

Creative urban marketing

Here’s a curious twist on civic boosterism. [ READ MORE ]

Geography of Buzz Buzz

Elizabeth Currid and Sarah Williams just had a show at Studio X, where they presented their study of the Geography of Buzz using photos of celebrity events from Getty Images. I won’t pay any attention to the methods issues, which include making excuses or predictions about commonly known buzz locales that don’t show up in [ READ MORE ]

A final science of man has no room for the unplanned

Daniel Cloud, who teaches philosophy at Princeton (via a Columbia degree) and runs two hedge funds, blames our hubris in predicting human behavior for the current crisis. What really produced the change in economics that led to disaster was the simple fact that you could now get away with saying certain kinds of things in public. [ READ MORE ]

Born to believe

New Scientist has an article (via A&L Daily) that discusses evolutionary theories for the existence of religion and the particular fervor engendered in times of crisis. The central supported argument is that we naturally make a dualist distinction between animate and inanimate objects, supposedly ascribing intentionality to the former but not the latter. This dualism [ READ MORE ]

Individual responsibility and subprime lending

The ComURB listserve has initiated a debate about the responsibility for the “reverse redlining” that led to poor and minority neighborhoods being targeted for subprime loans…even when lenders would have qualified for standard loans. My contribution follows: If we want to ascribe responsibility to individuals, to institutions, or to individuals in institutions, it seems to me [ READ MORE ]

Petersen on Power, Prestige and Position

I know I should be writing more. Perhaps I should just save my twittering style as drafts and trickle them out over a couple of days… But, for lack of anything else at the moment (otehr than the fact that I finally found auto insurance, which is a story no one wants to hear), let me [ READ MORE ]

People, Poverty, and Morality

Since a useful discussion ensuing from this post is more or less invisible if you’re not paying attention, I’ve decided to help it resurface here for potential continuation. As I see it, the basic discussion has evolved into a debate over whether poverty serves a social purpose and if so whether that purpose is morally acceptable. Jay [ READ MORE ]

Economic state of exception

The following quote from Bush in a CNN interview brings to mind Agamben’s state of exception: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.” In order to preserve the state, the state must be suspended and raw force [ READ MORE ]

Socialist perspective on the current crisis

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin of York University (CA) have a very interesting and (necessarily) long article tracing the hundred year history of the current financial crisis. It was this long chain of events that led to the massive funding of mortgages, the hedging and default derivatives based on this, the rating agencies AAA rating of [ READ MORE ]

W., Ending Tyranny

John Lewis Gaddis has an article in The American Interest arguing that G.W. Bush may have redefined, or more properly resurrected, America’s global mission for the 21st century. In his second inaugural address, Bush announced, “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in [ READ MORE ]

Great diagrams in anthropology, linguistics and social theory

Great diagrams in anthropology, linguistics and social theory collected by John Curran. [ READ MORE ]

Putting myself out of a job?

Russell Jacoby writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Freud, Marx, and Hegel are gone from their original disciplines and being generally forgotten, left to other disciplines’ selective adoption of their writings and ideas. The most interesting aspect of all this is Jacoby’s suggestion that it is precisely their concern with history and the [ READ MORE ]

The Military-Industrial Complex

I watched Jarecki’s Why We Fight (2005) last night. Though well crafted, it doesn’t go into enough detail and begins to get repetitious. However, it did contain excerpts from Eisenhower’s farewell speech that introduces the phrase “military-industrial complex” and presciently warns that allowing the military and industry to get too close will threaten democracy. It [ READ MORE ]