Last Post/Reflection
17 years ago
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Michelle Obama: A Feminist Review
NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, May 10, 2009
"First Lady Michelle Obama's emergence as the nation's "Mom-in-Chief" has sparked lively discussion in the feminist blogosphere. Some say the first lady image plays down her success as a career woman, but others say her presence in that role is, in itself, a sign of progress."
This NPR piece also highlights the importance that race plays in the perspectives among feminists. What may be seen by white feminists as reinforcing stereotypes and placing Michelle Obama in a "feminine box", is actually seen by some black feminists as an affirmation of African American women.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
"I am a Superwomyn." Yes she is.
Our classmate Laurice, a student of GSI Abigail Andrews, recently created this amazing video after interviewing three Pilipina womyn involved in one of the Pil-orgs on campus called GABRIELA Network (Gabnet). Gabnet is a Philippine-US womyn's solidarity organization that raises awareness and fights issues facing Pilipina womyn. Check out the video as an excellent example of consciousness raising and then visit Laurice's blog at http://1aurice.blogspot.com/.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Women Protest Legalized Rape
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has backed a law that the United Nations Development Fund for Women claims legalizes rape within marriage and forbids women from leaving the house without permission.
Afghan women protested the law and were attacked by a larger counter protest
Afghan 'anti-rape' women attacked
Afghanistan 'rape' law puts women's rights front and center
Women police linked arms and created a barrier around the protesters to protect them
April 15: Afghan police officers stop Shiite counter protesters in Kabul, Afghanistan. The group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration by 300 women Wednesday protesting against a new conservative marriage law. Some counter protesters pelted the women with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart.
Afghan women protested the law and were attacked by a larger counter protest
Afghan 'anti-rape' women attacked
Afghanistan 'rape' law puts women's rights front and center
Women police linked arms and created a barrier around the protesters to protect them
April 15: Afghan police officers stop Shiite counter protesters in Kabul, Afghanistan. The group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration by 300 women Wednesday protesting against a new conservative marriage law. Some counter protesters pelted the women with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Dude, You’ve Got Problems
By Judith Warner for The New York Times
April 23, 2009
Early this month, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old boy from Springfield, Mass., hanged himself after months of incessantly being hounded by his classmates for being “gay.” (He was not; but did, apparently, like to do well in school.)
In March, 2007, 17-year-old Eric Mohat shot himself in the head, after a long-term tormentor told him in class, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself; no one will miss you.” Eric liked theater, played the piano and wore bright clothing, a lawyer for his family told ABC news, and so had long been subject to taunts of “gay,” “fag,” “queer” and “homo.”
Teachers and school administrators, the Mohats’ lawsuit now asserts, did nothing.
We should do something to get this insanity under control.
I’m not just talking about combating bullying, which has been a national obsession ever since Columbine, and yet seems to continue unabated. I’m only partly talking about homophobia, which, though virulent, cruel and occasionally fatal among teenagers, is not the whole story behind the fact that words like “fag” and “gay” are now among the most potent and feared weapons in the school bully’s arsenal.
Being called a “fag,” you see, actually has almost nothing to do with being gay.
It’s really about showing any perceived weakness or femininity – by being emotional, seeming incompetent, caring too much about clothing, liking to dance or even having an interest in literature. It’s similar to what being viewed as a “nerd” is, Bennington College psychology professor David Anderegg notes in his 2007 book, “Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them”: “‘queer’ in the sense of being ‘odd’ or ‘unusual,’” but also, for middle schoolers in particular, doing “anything that was too much like what a goody-goody would do.”
It’s what being called a “girl” used to be, a generation or two ago.
For the complete article: Click here.
What’s Wrong With Cinderella?
By Peggy Orenstein for The New York Times Magazine
December 24, 2006
I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with “Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her “princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, “I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?”
She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.
“Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”
My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?”
Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a “trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. “Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.
For the complete article: Click here.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Put on your sociological lenses
"If Marxism had ever produced a functional, prosperous society, it might have looked something like this tiny southern Japanese island."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/world/asia/22japan.html
This NYtimes article describes the village of Hime Island that uses a work-sharing system aided by government subsidies to decrease unemployment. Hime's work-sharing is viewed as a traditional approach towards the Japanese ideals of harmony. While the author of the article wants to suggest this is Marxist socialism, I feel this is more a form of patrimonialism on a second look.
Some interesting notes from the article:
"Nor does the island’s penchant for equality stop at work-sharing. At an annual village ceremony to mark the coming of age of 20-year-old islanders, women are forbidden to wear traditional
kimonos for fear the differences in quality could reveal their households’ economic status."
"Many islanders say they accept the status quo simply because life here is comfortable. They say rocking the boat would only ostracize them on an island where everyone knows one another."
"My job is to prevent elections by keeping everyone equal, and thus happy,said Mr. Fujimoto[the current mayor], 65, sitting in a modest office in the village hall. His only visible sign of authority was a buzzer on his desk that he pushed to summon an assistant."
Monday, April 27, 2009
NUMMI
Just to bring theory alive a bit more, I was at the Cherry Blossom Parade in SF Japantown last week and here's what I find. NUMMI workers and their family walked down the streets in Japanese attire, though many were not Japanese, alongside several of its Toyota vehicles.
End the University as We Know It
By MARK C. TAYLOR
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost.
Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. [...] And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
Colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.
1. Restructure the curriculum: The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
2. Abolish permanent departments and create problem-focused programs. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions... Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff.
[...]
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change.
Full Article
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost.
Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. [...] And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
Colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.
1. Restructure the curriculum: The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
2. Abolish permanent departments and create problem-focused programs. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions... Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff.
[...]
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change.
Full Article
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
"Institution, Individual, Imagination"
Attend the First Annual UC Berkeley Sociology Research Symposium, "Institution, Individual, Imagination," on Friday, April 24 from 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
The Symposium will celebrate unstoppable intellectual inquiry among scholars from multiple departments in both the social sciences and humanities. Intended as a communal space for the sharing and building of new knowledge, the Symposium will exemplify the pursuit of fresh ideas and innovative research.
Among SOC 101B GSIs and students who will present: Mike Levien, Kate Mason, and Simeon Newman.
Happy Earth Day!
The Earth is but one country, and Mankind its Citizens
"Some claim that Earth Day is held on April 22 because it is Lenin's birthday. Not true. According to Kathleen Rogers of the Earth Day Network, the day was selected because it fell on a Wednesday in 1970, as it does today. The organizers figured they would get the most participation on a weekday. It was also a day when students would be on campuses, so the youth-driven movement could have more participation."
10 Things You Should Know About Earth Day
John Tierney wrote an article in the NYT that makes some rather bold claims:
"When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation .. Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology — the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.
But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:
1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because...
2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.
As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy..."
What do you think? Wealth + technology = better planet?
Friday, April 17, 2009
Why Do They Call Washington Bureaucrats "Czars?"
I'm sure a lot of people are burned out from theory right now, but in case you've ever wondered why they keep calling those washington peeps "czars," here's your answer. It was really starting to bother me so I looked it up.
Items within article tangentially related to class material (but not really):
"Czar"- Russia - Lenin
Benjamin Franklin - Spirit of Capitalism - Weber
Bureaucrat - bureaucracy - Weber
"How did a term for Russian royalty work its way into American government?"
When Benjamin Franklin wanted to describe our national indifference to royal pomp and circumstance, he would compare Americans to a London porter whose heavy load once jostled Czar Peter the Great. When told he had just bumped into the czar, the porter responded: "Poh! We are all czars here!"
Franklin's porter could have been describing the incoming Obama administration. Already Tom Daschle has been tapped for "health czar" [this is an old article] and Carol Browner for "climate czar." Adolfo Carrión is expected to be the "urban affairs czar." There's also been talk of a "technology czar" and a "copyright czar." Plans for a "car czar" recently fell apart on Capitol Hill, but Obama and the incoming Congress will try, try again in the new year.
This efflorescence of czars—those interagency point people charged with cutting through red tape to coordinate policy—has people wondering: Why do we use a term from imperial Russia to describe bureaucratic troubleshooters?
click for full article
Items within article tangentially related to class material (but not really):
"Czar"- Russia - Lenin
Benjamin Franklin - Spirit of Capitalism - Weber
Bureaucrat - bureaucracy - Weber
"How did a term for Russian royalty work its way into American government?"
When Benjamin Franklin wanted to describe our national indifference to royal pomp and circumstance, he would compare Americans to a London porter whose heavy load once jostled Czar Peter the Great. When told he had just bumped into the czar, the porter responded: "Poh! We are all czars here!"
Franklin's porter could have been describing the incoming Obama administration. Already Tom Daschle has been tapped for "health czar" [this is an old article] and Carol Browner for "climate czar." Adolfo Carrión is expected to be the "urban affairs czar." There's also been talk of a "technology czar" and a "copyright czar." Plans for a "car czar" recently fell apart on Capitol Hill, but Obama and the incoming Congress will try, try again in the new year.
This efflorescence of czars—those interagency point people charged with cutting through red tape to coordinate policy—has people wondering: Why do we use a term from imperial Russia to describe bureaucratic troubleshooters?
click for full article
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
More differences than predestenation
It seems that there are more differences between the Catholics and the Protestant than old Weber was willing to admit.
Take a look at this link, the protestants are towards the end, but in order to understand it, do watch the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fRJ0T-y-pw
A.
Take a look at this link, the protestants are towards the end, but in order to understand it, do watch the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fRJ0T-y-pw
A.
What Weber Didn't Know: The Truth about Booty
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
by Johann Hari
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
For the entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html
by Johann Hari
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
For the entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Week 12: Spontaneous, Brilliant Thoughts (Midterm Special)
This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. This week, the "Spontaneous, Brilliant Thoughts" forum will also be the place where you can ask and answer exam-specific questions. Of course, if your question needs its own post, please feel free to generate a separate entry. And good luck!
Requisition Me a Beat! Futurama-Style!
| Futurama | Weeknights, 9p/8c | |||
| Bureaucrat's Song | ||||
| ||||
How Hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back.
Courtesy of Classmate Kristen and Comedy Central.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
BUSA-Sponsored Study Group Meeting
The Berkeley Undergraduate Sociology Association will sponsor a review session to discuss the SOC 101B Midterm on Tuesday, April 14 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in Barrows 420. If you attended the SOC 101A review sessions last semester, you'd probably attest that more than 50 minds brooding over an exam equals some really good ideas.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Week 11: Spontaneous, Brilliant Thoughts
This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. A place to post something that comes to mind after lecture, or while reading, and that will generate spontaneous responses and a back and forth communication. So, freestyle your brilliance and post!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Playing Nice in School
I just wanted to quickly look at the role of the Spirit of Capitalism in our schools, which I know we all have lengthy experience with. I'm guessing the routine of jumping out of bed to get to high school, trying desperately not to fall asleep and then going back home to work on school work until some AM hour, might sound somewhat familiar. And now in college I know many of us feel perpetually behind on reading and every so often (or more often) lock ourselves in the library/dorm room/cafe and swear to catch up. 13 units is the minimum to be a full time student, and the University standard is that 3 hours should be spent outside of class time for each 1 unit. Thus 39 hours outside of the 13 hours is 52 hours per week. So we should be expecting 7 hours each day to spent on school each week as a full time student. In addition, we tend to want to spend time doing other things than reading Marx on the beach, like sleep, eating, trying new things and seeing friends. How can PE&SC give us new perspective on the role of the student?
Gossip Girls and Boys Learn to Be Nice
In this middle schools, the staff has felt the need to reteach or perhaps for the first time, how to be nice to others. The article cites busy schedules and workloads as placing pressure on children, perhaps leading them to ignore the finer sides of etiquette and kindness.
This Fall, More Sleep For Students In Wilton
And of course, students don't get sleep. Often in order to finish that deadline, students push to the side the necessity of sleeping enough so that you are not a zombie the next day.
Funny thing is that even as I write this, I feel guilty for suggesting that school may be structurally too taxing on students, and lazy for not simply committing myself to better time management and constant rigorous, focused work.
Gossip Girls and Boys Learn to Be Nice
In this middle schools, the staff has felt the need to reteach or perhaps for the first time, how to be nice to others. The article cites busy schedules and workloads as placing pressure on children, perhaps leading them to ignore the finer sides of etiquette and kindness.
This Fall, More Sleep For Students In Wilton
And of course, students don't get sleep. Often in order to finish that deadline, students push to the side the necessity of sleeping enough so that you are not a zombie the next day.
Funny thing is that even as I write this, I feel guilty for suggesting that school may be structurally too taxing on students, and lazy for not simply committing myself to better time management and constant rigorous, focused work.
The GodFatha
Opening Scene
Look at the exchange of favors and loyalty in action!
The scene where Salluzo talks with Michael at Louis':
"It was only business."
Look at the exchange of favors and loyalty in action!
The scene where Salluzo talks with Michael at Louis':
"It was only business."
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Specialization --> Iron Cage?
Treating an Illness Is One Thing. What About a Patient With Many?
By Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Published: March 30, 2009
Mazie Piccolo, 84, has so many health problems it’s hard to keep track: congestive heart failure, an abnormal heart rhythm, arthritis in her knees, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, gastric reflux, and depression.
What is striking about her predicament is not how rare it is, but how common. Two-thirds of people over age 65, and almost three-quarters of people over 80, have multiple chronic health conditions.
Yet people with multiple health problems — a condition known as multimorbidity — are largely overlooked both in medical research and in the nation’s clinics and hospitals. The default position is to treat complicated patients as collections of malfunctioning body parts rather than as whole human beings.
“Very often, there is nobody looking at the big picture or recognizing that what is best for the disease may not be best for the patient,” said Dr. Mary E. Tinetti, a geriatrician at the Yale School of Medicine. "And treating one disease in isolation, she added, can make another disease worse.
“As our population ages, we need some kind of overseer to juggle all the diagnoses and prescriptions and look for conflicts and duplications. This would also help to counteract the notion in many people’s minds that the doctor knows best — because often the doctor doesn’t.”
In a medical system geared toward individual organs and diseases, there is no champion for patients with multiple illnesses — no National Institute on Multimorbidity, no charity Race for the Multimorbidity Cure, no celebrity pressuring Capitol Hill for more research.
[...]
By Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Published: March 30, 2009
Mazie Piccolo, 84, has so many health problems it’s hard to keep track: congestive heart failure, an abnormal heart rhythm, arthritis in her knees, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, gastric reflux, and depression.
What is striking about her predicament is not how rare it is, but how common. Two-thirds of people over age 65, and almost three-quarters of people over 80, have multiple chronic health conditions.
Yet people with multiple health problems — a condition known as multimorbidity — are largely overlooked both in medical research and in the nation’s clinics and hospitals. The default position is to treat complicated patients as collections of malfunctioning body parts rather than as whole human beings.
“Very often, there is nobody looking at the big picture or recognizing that what is best for the disease may not be best for the patient,” said Dr. Mary E. Tinetti, a geriatrician at the Yale School of Medicine. "And treating one disease in isolation, she added, can make another disease worse.
“As our population ages, we need some kind of overseer to juggle all the diagnoses and prescriptions and look for conflicts and duplications. This would also help to counteract the notion in many people’s minds that the doctor knows best — because often the doctor doesn’t.”
In a medical system geared toward individual organs and diseases, there is no champion for patients with multiple illnesses — no National Institute on Multimorbidity, no charity Race for the Multimorbidity Cure, no celebrity pressuring Capitol Hill for more research.
[...]
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
An Interview With Foucault
This interview was conducted on Nov. 3, 1980, by Michael Bess, a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault was in Berkeley to deliver the Howison lectures (“Subjectivity and Truth”) on October 20-21, 1980. Excerpts of this interview appeared in an article written by Bess, and published on November 10, 1980 in the Daily Californian, the Berkeley student newspaper. The interview was conducted in French, and is translated by Michael Bess.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/historydept/michaelbess/Foucault%20Interview
Or click on comment section for complete interview.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/historydept/michaelbess/Foucault%20Interview
Or click on comment section for complete interview.
Religous Duty to Live
Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients
Click for full article.“People think that spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands — ’Let what happens happen’ — but in fact we know they want more aggressive care,” said Holly G. Prigerson, the study’s senior author and director of the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
“To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Dr. Prigerson said, “and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”
Does the spirit of capitalism drive us to live as long as we can to work as much as we can? The picture at the top is actually from the movie "Bucketlist" in which two terminally ill patients attempt to live out all their life dreams (skydiving... and more I'm sure, I've only seen the trailer) instead of wasting away in bed. What would Weber think?
As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
“We were stunned,” said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”
It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.
Apparently courts want to restrict jurors knowledge and judgement to that of what the court, and both sides of the case have agreed upon. Controlling internet searches is no easy feat, but judges are able to gather information about jurors outside information by cell phone text message records, twitter, and looking at jurors online blogs. (Yet I still can't bring myself to delete my Facebook profile) Do you think this control of juror's given information is just? What would Foucault say?
Week 9: Spontaneous Brilliant Thoughts
This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. A place to post something that comes to mind after lecture, or while reading, and that will generate spontaneous responses and a back and forth communication. So, freestyle your brilliance and post!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Castration as Punishment
Europeans Debate Castration of Sex Offenders
“I can finally live knowing that I am no harm to anybody,” he said during an interview at a McDonald’s here, as children played loudly nearby. “I am living a productive life. I want to tell people that there is help.” ...“These people must be under permanent detention where they can be monitored,” he said. “There has to be a difference between the rights of the victim and the perpetrator.”
Click here for a link to the full article
How do we exit the panopticon? Is castration corrective? Interesting that the father of a victim invokes the notion of human rights.
Monday, March 9, 2009
China's Secret Jails
Seeking Justice, Chinese land in secret jails
China claims to have a petition system available to all citizens that allows them to voice complaints to the central government. Instead of being heard, citizens are being abducted, held in secret jails and then sent back home. What form of power is this? Is this disciplinary power, or a panopticon on a nation-wide scale?
China claims to have a petition system available to all citizens that allows them to voice complaints to the central government. Instead of being heard, citizens are being abducted, held in secret jails and then sent back home. What form of power is this? Is this disciplinary power, or a panopticon on a nation-wide scale?
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Week 8: Spontaneous Brilliant Thoughts
"This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. A place to post something that comes to mind after lecture, or while reading, and that will generate spontaneous responses and a back and forth communication. So, freestyle your brilliance and post!"
Note: brilliance is subjective. one person's random/tangential thought could be another person's awesome insight for the week. or even if something isn't initially stunning it can be transformed...like diamonds.
happy posting! =)
Note: brilliance is subjective. one person's random/tangential thought could be another person's awesome insight for the week. or even if something isn't initially stunning it can be transformed...like diamonds.
happy posting! =)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Prison-as-Panopticon
From Michael Burawoy: "Pelican Bay is one of the most advanced Panopticon Prisons in California. [The following youtube clip] shows the limits of the panopticon."
Sovereign Power and Repression
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Courtesy of Youtube and Mike Levien.
This movie (see link), "Entre les murs" or "The Class" is now in theater and comes straight from Foucault's DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH. Disclaimer: It is a slow film precisely because it aspires to be realistic, but I was able to make numerous connections to class. Has anyone else seen it?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068646/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068646/
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Where's my social function?
Forced From Executive Pay to Hourly Wage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/us/01survival.html?scp=1&sq=janitor&st=cse
Abnormally, our societies natural abilities aren't corresponding to our social functions. Many are finding different jobs that may earn less, and be lower on the social hierarchy than their previous jobs. Will our society change the social functions or the natural abilities of those who live here? I wonder if jobs will come back to those that were recently fired.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/us/01survival.html?scp=1&sq=janitor&st=cse
TEMPE, Ariz. — Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway.
Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s janitorial services company. But that does not make the work any easier.
“You’re fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day,” Mr. Cooper said.
Abnormally, our societies natural abilities aren't corresponding to our social functions. Many are finding different jobs that may earn less, and be lower on the social hierarchy than their previous jobs. Will our society change the social functions or the natural abilities of those who live here? I wonder if jobs will come back to those that were recently fired.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Week 7: Spontaneous Brilliant Thoughts
This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. A place to post something that comes to mind after lecture, or while reading, and that will generate spontaneous responses and a back and forth communication. So, freestyle your brilliance and post!
FOUCAULT!
In lecture yesterday, I was SO interested in the paragraph that Professor has read out loud for us. It is the one on page 172. I was wondering if we can start a discussion about it. I mean, to be fully honest, I am still a little confused. So it would be great if someone can start off, and we can all have great/wonderful ideas together! So here is the passage:
A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (Cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control- to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable. The old simple schema of confinement and enclosure- thick walls, a heavy gate that prevents entering or leaving- began to be replaced by the calculation of openings, or filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies. Foucault, 172.
My own little understanding of this passage is that Foucault is discussing how the mechanism of disciplinary would be seeing everything as a whole. (It is more open, thick walls no longer exist.) In this case, surveillance itself becomes part of the disciplinary process (examples of hospitals/schools). Thus, power changes through it's architecture, in which discipline functions through a calculated gaze (it is not longer calculated by force).
Thank you! Wafa
A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (Cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control- to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable. The old simple schema of confinement and enclosure- thick walls, a heavy gate that prevents entering or leaving- began to be replaced by the calculation of openings, or filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies. Foucault, 172.
My own little understanding of this passage is that Foucault is discussing how the mechanism of disciplinary would be seeing everything as a whole. (It is more open, thick walls no longer exist.) In this case, surveillance itself becomes part of the disciplinary process (examples of hospitals/schools). Thus, power changes through it's architecture, in which discipline functions through a calculated gaze (it is not longer calculated by force).
Thank you! Wafa
Thursday, February 26, 2009
"Everything's amazing, nobody's happy."
Louis CK
"When I read things like 'The foundations of capitalism are shattering",' I'm like maybe we need that."
I just thought this was funny. And it makes a nice point about our inability to finally satisfy our needs with increasing division of labor. Durkheim may say this is great, this is how OS can be created, while Marx might point to how it just perpetuates the increase of DL and capitalist hunger, while Foucault might just sit back and watch what we decide.
Slumdogs' Big Dreams
Horatio Alger Relocates to a Mumbai Slum
This article offers an interesting perspective of the Oscar sweeping film, Slumdog Millionaire as a signal of shifting ideologies. The film is the exemplary American story of a poor slum-dwelling man who, through individual guts and grit, wins a million dollars and I'm guessing finds the love of his life again. It takes place, however, in India. Due to the economic crisis, America is currently reevaluating the American Dream while India seems to be increasingly taking hold of it. Is the collective consciousness of the US changing by Obama's push to collectivize government? Or does the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire mark the hold of the American Dream upon us? Would Foucault have anything to say other than, "It's all power"?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Lethal Injection
Our current form of execution is by lethal injection. While Burawoy read a description of the process, he suggested we could also find a video of the process on youtube. I actually found it highly difficult to find a clip of an actual execution, and frankly it is a draining process watching so many clips of the death chambers.
Here is a more dramatic representation of lethal injection from the movie, Dead Man Walking. You can skip ahead about 4 minutes to the execution chamber.
Notice how the condemned man, says to the witnesses. "I just wanna say I think killin' is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's me or y'all or your government". Also notice the layout of the execution chamber itself. It's a small room with windows for select witnesses related to the victim and the criminal. The executioner presses a button and the lethal injection is automated. And to quote a youtube user that commented on the clip, "the movie is actually pretty neutral on the issue. Watch the last few minutes of this video - the juxtaposition of Poncelet's crime to his death...shows the evil thing he did right next to the cruelty of his own death. I think it lets the viewer come to his/her own conclusion. Powerful stuff."
Here is a more dramatic representation of lethal injection from the movie, Dead Man Walking. You can skip ahead about 4 minutes to the execution chamber.
Notice how the condemned man, says to the witnesses. "I just wanna say I think killin' is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's me or y'all or your government". Also notice the layout of the execution chamber itself. It's a small room with windows for select witnesses related to the victim and the criminal. The executioner presses a button and the lethal injection is automated. And to quote a youtube user that commented on the clip, "the movie is actually pretty neutral on the issue. Watch the last few minutes of this video - the juxtaposition of Poncelet's crime to his death...shows the evil thing he did right next to the cruelty of his own death. I think it lets the viewer come to his/her own conclusion. Powerful stuff."
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
President Obama's Speech
A few hours ago, President Obama gave a speech that outlined his view of the nation's current situation, including a brief analysis of what preceded the current economic crisis, along with his goals for the future. (Does anyone else think this has an uncanny resemblance to our midterm?)
Did you find anything particularly striking during the speech? Let's hear your thoughts. Don't worry, you don't have to write an essay. On this blog, you never have to raise your hand and you will never be graded for what you say. What's on your mind?
Btw, this is not a partisan blog. Feel free to watch and comment on Governor Jindal's Republican response if you want.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
From Professor Burawoy
"I've posted two articles on Foucault's political work defending the rights of prisoners [on Bspace]. The shorter one is a brief summary of two books on the matter whereas the second is a critical account of Foucault's claim to be allowing prisoners to speak out their concerns, giving them their authentic voice. The author turns Foucault against Foucault showing how difficult it is for intellectuals to allow others to speak without also being spoken for. What might Gramsci think of this with his idea of the organic intellectual? The debate between Gramsci and Foucault is indeed a fascinating one!"—Professor Burawoy
Playing it Cool
For those of us not taking Social Psychology this semester, we recently watched Cool Hand Luke as an example of the effects of social conformity and obedience. Since the movie is the story of a man sent to prison for a petty crime, and struggles with the oppression of prison life, there are also interesting ties to Durkheim and Foucault (especially as we continue reading Discipline and Punish I bet)
Post continued in the comments section-
"The Box"
Post continued in the comments section-
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Foucault - Chomsky Debates
Several of the GSIs have showed/will be showing these debates in section, as a way of introducing Michel Foucault (and it's kind of cool that we can finally watch one of our theorists on film!). Here, Foucault debates Noam Chomsky (linguist, jack-of-all-trades, political activist, anarcho-libertarian-socialist?) on the nature and location of power in society, on human nature (and whether we can even say what "human nature" is), and on the possibilities of realizing a better, brighter future.
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawGakdNoT0
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Ai5WPHqWA
Keep in mind possible comparisons between Foucault and: (1) Durkheim; (2) Marx; and (3) Gramsci.
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawGakdNoT0
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Ai5WPHqWA
Keep in mind possible comparisons between Foucault and: (1) Durkheim; (2) Marx; and (3) Gramsci.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Social Justice in Times of Crisis
In this February 8th NY Times article, we can read about the different perspectives on welfare - food stamps, TANF, etc. - in this time of economic crisis. Does increasing support to these types of welfare create the social justice that Durkheim says we need for a "normal" division of labor? Are we in a time of crisis, wherein "the vital functions are obliged to draw their nourishment from less essential functions"? (Durkheim, 213) Are there other Durkheimian arguments we can make here?
...
The ‘W’ Word, Re-engaged
Ronald Reagan brooked no doubt that food stamps equaled welfare. Running for president in 1976 he told what became a defining tale about the “strapping young buck” in the supermarket line who used stamps to buy T-bone steaks. His first White House budget made deep food stamp cuts.
Newt Gingrich equated food stamps and welfare, and tried to use Bill Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it” to dismantle the program. Rudolph Giuliani, in his end-welfare days as the mayor of New York, railed against a “romantic and emotional” view of food stamps and ordered subordinates to withhold applications.
But George W. Bush did not treat food stamps like welfare. He dubbed the program “nutritional assistance” and gave bonuses to states that were most aggressive in signing poor people up. At the same time he pushed states to cut their cash assistance rolls — citing the failures of the welfare state.
There has long been an element of the subjective in what gets defined as the “safety net” and what gets attacked as “welfare,” that elastic and stigmatizing term. Now rising joblessness and misery have started new conflicts and exposed old rifts.
The recovery measures moving through Congress would spend significant new sums on programs for the needy. The House version includes food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, child care, Head Start, energy assistance, homelessness prevention, disability payments and infant nutrition. A Senate agreement was reached Friday night, with further negotiation to come between the two chambers.
Sponsors of this spending call it a humane response to soaring hardship and an economically productive one; giving money to the poor stimulates the economy, they say, because poor people are quick to spend it. Conservatives have argued that poverty programs undermine work and marriage, and some see the stimulus bill as a stealth expansion of the welfare state. The very word, welfare, was weaponized last week.... [Follow link above for full article]Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Detecting Textual Evidence
Hi classmates :) I started doing this on my computer for the midterm and thought I would share. I marked where I could detect "textual evidence" for the four themes Burawoy suggests are in the inaugural. Add or disagree wherever you catch something I did not- which is quite a bit b/c almost every line can be tied with a theme!
The work I started is in the comment box under this post.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Durkheim vs. Greenspan
Because this is the "Living Theory" blog, we're going to resurrect Durkheim. GSI Kate Mason shared the following NYT article with her sections. She asked: How would Durkheim question or respond to Greenspan? What do you think?
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, with John Snow, former Secretary of the Treasury, at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation
WASHINGTON — ... [A]lmost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.
... Now 82, Mr. Greenspan came in for one of the harshest grillings of his life, as Democratic lawmakers asked him time and again whether he had been wrong, why he had been wrong and whether he was sorry.
Critics, including many economists, now blame the former Fed chairman for the financial crisis that is tipping the economy into a potentially deep recession. Mr. Greenspan’s critics say that he encouraged the bubble in housing prices by keeping interest rates too low for too long and that he failed to rein in the explosive growth of risky and often fraudulent mortgage lending.
“You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”
Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”
On a day that brought more bad news about rising home foreclosures and slumping employment, Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken.
He noted that the immense and largely unregulated business of spreading financial risk widely, through the use of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, had gotten out of control and had added to the havoc of today’s crisis. As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives.
... Mr. Waxman noted that the Fed chairman had been one of the nation’s leading voices for deregulation, displaying past statements in which Mr. Greenspan had argued that government regulators were no better than markets at imposing discipline.
... Mr. Greenspan, along with most other banking regulators in Washington, also resisted calls for tighter regulation of subprime mortgages and other high-risk exotic mortgages that allowed people to borrow far more than they could afford.
The Federal Reserve had broad authority to prohibit deceptive lending practices under a 1994 law called the Home Owner Equity Protection Act . But it took little action during the long housing boom, and fewer than 1 percent of all mortgages were subjected to restrictions under that law.
... Despite his chagrin over the mortgage mess, the former Fed chairman proposed only one specific regulation: that companies selling mortgage-backed securities be required to hold a significant number themselves. ...
To read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html
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