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HP & PUP: Hufflepuff’s PUP Reading List

April 26, 2013 by

This week we have a couple of PUP books for any prospective Hogwarts student seeking placement in the Hufflepuff house. Hufflepuffs don’t really get too much attention; their only notable student was Cedric Diggory who was killed by He-Who-Can’t-Be-Named. Yet, Hufflepuffs value hard work, patience, loyalty, and fair play making them interested in some of our books about art and overall well-being.

1. No Joke: Making Jewish Humor by Ruth Wisse- This book is a perfect balance of scholarly and funny.

Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking–as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, Wisse draws attention to the precarious conditions that have called Jewish humor into being–and the price it may exact from its practitioners and audience.

Wisse broadly traces modern Jewish humor around the world, teasing out its implications as she explores memorable and telling examples from German, Yiddish, English, Russian, and Hebrew. Among other topics, the book looks at how Jewish humor channeled Jewish learning and wordsmanship into new avenues of creativity, brought relief to liberal non-Jews in repressive societies, and enriched popular culture in the United States.

Even as it invites readers to consider the pleasures and profits of Jewish humor, the book asks difficult but fascinating questions: Can the excess and extreme self-ridicule of Jewish humor go too far and backfire in the process? And is “leave ‘em laughing” the wisest motto for a people that others have intended to sweep off the stage of history?

2. The Importance of Being Civil: The Struggle for Political Decency by John A. Hall- Knowing of Hufflepuffs’ desire for cooperation, they would probably praise this book and recommend it to those at the Ministry of Magic.

Civility is desirable and possible, but can this fragile ideal be guaranteed? The Importance of Being Civil offers the most comprehensive look at the nature and advantages of civility, throughout history and in our world today. Esteemed sociologist John Hall expands our understanding of civility as related to larger social forces–including revolution, imperialism, capitalism, nationalism, and war–and the ways that such elements limit the potential for civility. Combining wide-ranging historical and comparative evidence with social and moral theory, Hall examines how the nature of civility has fluctuated in the last three centuries, how it became lost, and how it was reestablished in the twentieth century following the two world wars. He also considers why civility is currently breaking down and what can be done to mitigate this threat.

Paying particular attention to the importance of individualism, of rules allowing people to create their own identities, Hall offers a composite definition of civility. He focuses on the nature of agreeing to differ over many issues, the significance of fashion and consumption, the benefits of inclusive politics on the nature of identity, the greater ability of the United States in integrating immigrants in comparison to Europe, and the conditions likely to assure peace in international affairs. Hall factors in those who are opposed to civility, and the various methods with which states have destroyed civil and cooperative relations in society.

3. Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What it Means for Our Economic Well-Being by Zoltan Acs- I could see a Hufflepuff doing good magical deeds for others and this book shows the necessity of such deeds as philanthropy.

Philanthropy has long been a distinctive feature of American culture, but its crucial role in the economic well-being of the nation–and the world–has remained largely unexplored. Why Philanthropy Matters takes an in-depth look at philanthropy as an underappreciated force in capitalism, measures its critical influence on the free-market system, and demonstrates how American philanthropy could serve as a model for the productive reinvestment of wealth in other countries. Factoring in philanthropic cycles that help balance the economy, Zoltan Acs offers a richer picture of capitalism, and a more accurate backdrop for considering policies that would promote the capitalist system for the good of all.

Examining the dynamics of American-style capitalism since the eighteenth century, Acs argues that philanthropy achieves three critical outcomes. It deals with the question of what to do with wealth–keep it, tax it, or give it away. It complements government in creating public goods. And, by focusing on education, science, and medicine, philanthropy has a positive effect on economic growth and productivity. Acs describes how individuals such as Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey have used their wealth to establish institutions and promote knowledge, and Acs shows how philanthropy has given an edge to capitalism by promoting vital forces–like university research–necessary for technological innovation, economic equality, and economic security. Philanthropy also serves as a guide for countries with less flexible capitalist institutions, and Acs makes the case for a larger, global philanthropic culture.

4. A Glossary of Chickens: Poems by Gary Whitehead- For some lighter reading, Hufflepuffs would certainly enjoy this collection of poetry.

With skillful rhetoric and tempered lyricism, the poems in A Glossary of Chickens explore, in part, the struggle to understand the world through the symbolism of words. Like the hens of the title poem, Gary J. Whitehead’s lyrics root around in the earth searching for sustenance, cluck rather than crow, and possess a humble majesty.

Confronting subjects such as moral depravity, nature’s indifference, aging, illness, death, the tenacity of spirit, and the possibility of joy, the poems in this collection are accessible and controlled, musical and meditative, imagistic and richly figurative. They are informed by history, literature, and a deep interest in the natural world, touching on a wide range of subjects, from the Civil War and whale ships, to animals and insects. Two poems present biblical narratives, the story of Lot’s wife and an imagining of Noah in his old age. Other poems nod to favorite authors: one poem is in the voice of the character Babo, from Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, while another is a kind of prequel to Emily Dickinson’s “She rose to His Requirement.”

As inventive as they are observant, these memorable lyrics strive for revelation and provide their own revelations.

Now that all four Hogwarts houses have their respective required reading lists, which house do you belong in?

Filed Under: Art and Architecture, Books To Add To Your Reading List, Literature, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology, Twitter

PUP Author Geoffrey Robinson in Documentary about East Timor

April 22, 2013 by

This weekend the acclaimed documentary Alias Ruby Blade will premiere at the Tribeca film festival. The documentary unravels the history behind the new nation in East Timor after its struggle for independence. The documentary features PUP author Geoffrey Robinson who has written a book about East Timor. Robinson authored “If you Leave Us Here, We Will Die”: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor. For showtime information click here.

Read a review for the documentary from This Week in New York below.

Alias Ruby Blade: A Story of Love and Revolution is an intimate, involving documentary that goes behind the scenes of East Timor’s battle for independence, structured like a gripping thriller with a decidedly personal edge. In 1991, Australian Kirsty Sword went to East Timor as part of a team posing as tourists while actually making a secret film about the embattled Indonesian island. Almost immediately, the Australian teacher and activist found herself right in the middle of the violent struggle as bullets flew all around her and her team, but they kept the cameras rolling, compiling amazing footage that helped alert the world as to what was happening there. Sword soon became a courier for the revolution, adopting the spy name Ruby Blade and smuggling in notes and, eventually, electronic equipment to jailed resistance leader Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, who was serving a life sentence in Jakarta’s Cipinang Prison. Armed with a camera, Sword took remarkable footage during those years, most of which has never before been shown to the public; she opened up her archives for husband-and-wife documentarians Tanya Ager Meillier and Alex Meillier and speaks extensively with them in the film, relating her involvement with the independence movement — which included falling in love with the charismatic Xanana. The Meilliers also talk with such key resistance fighters as Nobel Peace Prize winner José Ramos-Horta and diplomat Constancio Pinto as well as historian and human rights activist Geoffrey Robinson and Inside Indonesia editor Pat Walsh, who share their stories about the Indonesian occupation that lasted from 1975 to 1999, followed by a UN-sponsored referendum for independence that led to yet more horrors. But Sword, who narrates much of the film, and Xanana, who appears primarily in archival footage and photographs, never gave up their dream of a free, democratic East Timor while also considering a life together. As much as Alias Ruby Blade delves into the political situation in East Timor, it’s really about how a young, strong woman followed her heart and made a difference in a faraway part of the globe. Alias Ruby Blade will have its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it’s part of the Documentary Competition. (By the way, the less you know about how things turned out in East Timor, the more exciting the film is, so don’t read up on it before going to one of the four screenings.)

Learn more about the film here.

Filed Under: Asian and Asian American studies, Events, International Relations, Sociology, Twitter, World History

Country/Rap Song on Race Relations

April 10, 2013 by

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J on the same track? That’s equally as strange as the Tim McGraw and Nelly duet in 2004′s “Over and Over”. Unlike that smooth song about heartbreak, however, Paisley and LL’s song has a much different topic. The new song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is causing quite a stir.

The song is supposed to be interpreted as a song about overcoming racial tensions caused by past events in American history. However, as is everything that exists, its message is subject to interpretation. Race relations has never been an easy topic to discuss and many are calling the song an epic fail. The duo calls the song “a conversation starter.”

While the two may have had good intentions in writing this song, to get a better picture of race relations and how they are evolving, check out some of these PUP books.

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver & Traci R. Burch

The American racial order–the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s races and ethnicities–is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.

The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s election–not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices.

Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.

Jennifer L. Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, professor of African and African American studies, and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. Vesla M. Weaver is an assistant professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Traci R. Burch is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation.

What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans by Kenneth Prewitt

America is preoccupied with race statistics–perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different “race” line–the nativity line–separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government’s “statistical races.” Not likely, observes Kenneth Prewitt, who shows why the way we count by race is flawed.

Prewitt calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenth-century race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical “Asian race.” One that once tried to divide the “white race” into “good whites” and “bad whites,” and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains four hundred years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated twenty years ago. Contrary to common sense, the classification says there are only two ethnicities in America–Hispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better?

What Is Your Race? clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It’s not an overnight task–particularly the explosive step of dropping today’s race question from the census–but Prewitt argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race by Thomas J. Sugrue

Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner’s famous remark “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama’s America and how President Obama intends to deal with it.

Obama’s journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions–particularly between blacks and whites–remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama’s evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama’s place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency.

Does Obama’s presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton).

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, In the News, Music, Sociology, Twitter

PUP books on College

April 8, 2013 by

Students at the college that I attend know that it’s truly spring when high school seniors visit campus in flocks- no, in army sized battalions- for Accepted Students Day. Yesterday my college’s campus was filled to the rim with high schoolers and their parents, and for those students choosing to go to college, soon they will have to decide which colleges they will be attending in fall 2013.

College is undoubtedly the best time of your life. There will never be another time when you have limited responsibilities and, for the most part, total freedom. PUP has some great reads on what college is like now and what it could be like in the future. Here’s a list of some college related reading from PUP!

1. College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco- For so many, the point of college is to get a degree so that you can get a job. While this is the attitude held by many today, this is not what college was initially designed to achieve.

As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience–an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers–is in danger of becoming a thing of the past.

In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In arguing for what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America’s democratic promise.

In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations.

2. Higher Education in the Digital Age by William G. Bowen- While Delbanco looks at what college used to be like in the past, William Bowen discusses what higher education looks like today in the digital age and where technology may lead us for the future.

Two of the most visible and important trends in higher education today are its exploding costs and the rapid expansion of online learning. Could the growth in online courses slow the rising cost of college and help solve the crisis of affordability? In this short and incisive book, William G. Bowen, one of the foremost experts on the intersection of education and economics, explains why, despite his earlier skepticism, he now believes technology has the potential to help rein in costs without negatively affecting student learning. As a former president of Princeton University, an economist, and author of many books on education, including the acclaimed bestseller The Shape of the River, Bowen speaks with unique expertise on the subject.

Surveying the dizzying array of new technology-based teaching and learning initiatives, including the highly publicized emergence of “massive open online courses” (MOOCs), Bowen argues that such technologies could transform traditional higher education–allowing it at last to curb rising costs by increasing productivity, while preserving quality and protecting core values. But the challenges, which are organizational and philosophical as much as technological, are daunting. They include providing hard evidence of whether online education is cost-effective in various settings, rethinking the governance and decision-making structures of higher education, and developing customizable technological platforms. Yet, Bowen remains optimistic that the potential payoff is great.

3. Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More by Derek Bok- Are we actually learning what we should be learning in college? Bok explores the challenges that academic institutions face in trying to help students accomplish more.

Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago.

Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught.

In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America’s colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique–one that educators will ignore at their peril.

4. Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos & Michael S. McPherson- I think everyone has had that one professor who told you to look to your left and to your right, and that only one of you would make it out alive from that class. Today less than 60% of students in American universities graduate. Why does this happen?

The United States has long been a model for accessible, affordable education, as exemplified by the country’s public universities. And yet less than 60 percent of the students entering American universities today are graduating. Why is this happening, and what can be done? Crossing the Finish Line provides the most detailed exploration ever of college completion at America’s public universities. This groundbreaking book sheds light on such serious issues as dropout rates linked to race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Probing graduation rates at twenty-one flagship public universities and four statewide systems of public higher education, the authors focus on the progress of students in the entering class of 1999–from entry to graduation, transfer, or withdrawal. They examine the effects of parental education, family income, race and gender, high school grades, test scores, financial aid, and characteristics of universities attended (especially their selectivity). The conclusions are compelling: minority students and students from poor families have markedly lower graduation rates–and take longer to earn degrees–even when other variables are taken into account. Noting the strong performance of transfer students and the effects of financial constraints on student retention, the authors call for improved transfer and financial aid policies, and suggest ways of improving the sorting processes that match students to institutions.

Filed Under: Education, Sociology, Technology & Media, Twitter

HP & PUP: Gryffindor’s PUP Reading List

April 5, 2013 by

This week we have a couple of PUP books for any prospective Hogwarts student seeking placement in the Gryffindor house. What would a Gryffindor read? Or more specifically, what would Harry Potter read? Since Gryffindors value bravery, nerve, and chivalry, their required reading list would consist of books that highlight ethics, combat, and democracy. I’m sure “The Chosen One” would choose these books:

1. The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It by Anat Admati & Martin Hellwig- Gryffindors natural tendency to fix problems would draw them to Admati and Hellwig’s new book.

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What is wrong with today’s banking system? The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. The Bankers’ New Clothes examines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid.

Admati and Hellwig argue we can have a safer and healthier banking system without sacrificing any of the benefits of the system, and at essentially no cost to society. They show that banks are as fragile as they are not because they must be, but because they want to be–and they get away with it. Whereas this situation benefits bankers, it distorts the economy and exposes the public to unnecessary risks. Weak regulation and ineffective enforcement allowed the buildup of risks that ushered in the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Much can be done to create a better system and prevent crises. Yet the lessons from the crisis have not been learned.

Admati and Hellwig seek to engage the broader public in the debate by cutting through the jargon of banking, clearing the fog of confusion, and presenting the issues in simple and accessible terms.

2. Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era by Joseph Nye- Their natural born leadership qualities also make Nye’s book a good choice in learning more about past leaders.

3-27 pres leadThis book examines the foreign policy decisions of the presidents who presided over the most critical phases of America’s rise to world primacy in the twentieth century, and assesses the effectiveness and ethics of their choices. Joseph Nye, who was ranked as one of Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Top Global Thinkers, reveals how some presidents tried with varying success to forge a new international order while others sought to manage America’s existing position. Taking readers from Theodore Roosevelt’s bid to insert America into the global balance of power to George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War in the early 1990s, Nye compares how Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson responded to America’s growing power and failed in their attempts to create a new order. He looks at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to escape isolationism before World War II, and at Harry Truman’s successful transformation of Roosevelt’s grand strategy into a permanent overseas presence of American troops at the dawn of the Cold War. He describes Dwight Eisenhower’s crucial role in consolidating containment, and compares the roles of Ronald Reagan and Bush in ending the Cold War and establishing the unipolar world in which American power reached its zenith.

The book shows how transformational presidents like Wilson and Reagan changed how America sees the world, but argues that transactional presidents like Eisenhower and the elder Bush were sometimes more effective and ethical. It also draws important lessons for today’s uncertain world, in which presidential decision making is more critical than ever.

3. The Leaderless Economy: Why the World Economic System Fell Apart and How to Fix It by Peter Temin and David Vines- Gryffindor do-gooders should read this to find out how they can be the leaders in this financial crisis.

Leaderless EconomyThe Leaderless Economy reveals why international financial cooperation is the only solution to today’s global economic crisis. In this timely and important book, Peter Temin and David Vines argue that our current predicament is a catastrophe rivaled only by the Great Depression. Taking an in-depth look at the history of both, they explain what went wrong and why, and demonstrate why international leadership is needed to restore prosperity and prevent future crises.

Temin and Vines argue that the financial collapse of the 1930s was an “end-of-regime crisis” in which the economic leader of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, found itself unable to stem international panic as countries abandoned the gold standard. They trace how John Maynard Keynes struggled for years to identify the causes of the Great Depression, and draw valuable lessons from his intellectual journey. Today we are in the midst of a similar crisis, one in which the regime that led the world economy in the twentieth century–that of the United States–is ending. Temin and Vines show how America emerged from World War II as an economic and military powerhouse, but how deregulation and a lax attitude toward international monetary flows left the nation incapable of reining in an overleveraged financial sector and powerless to contain the 2008 financial panic. Fixed exchange rates in Europe and Asia have exacerbated the problem.

4. Making War at Fort Hood:Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community by Kenneth MacLeish- Their interest in combat will bring them to this book about life in a military community.

3-6 Making WarMaking War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army’s Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war’s reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic.

Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood’s soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence–not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm’s way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say “thank you” to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war.

Keep coming back to get your reading list for your Hogwarts house!

Filed Under: Books To Add To Your Reading List, Economics, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology, Twitter

Stanford announces partnership with edX making progress for Higher Education in the Digital Age

April 3, 2013 by

I can do everything I need to do from the comfort of my couch. I can order groceries to be delivered to my house, talk to my friends, and write a collaborative paper all online. Today we can do all sorts of things on-line- including getting an education. William G. Bowen, president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton University, explains what he believes are the benefits of technology in higher education in his new book Higher Education in the Digital Age.

Stanford University announced today that they will be teaming up with edX- a massive open online course (MOOC) platform that offers university-level courses online. The Washington Post reports that Anant Argarwal, president of edX “envisions that any school or company could use it to mount a course, part of what he calls a ‘true, planet-scale democratization of education.’”

Bowen believes that this type of technology can transform higher education by making it more accessible and cost-efficient while still being able to provide quality education. He recognizes the potential downsides of the future of online learning and notes in an article for Inside Higher Ed, “One of the issues is really an equity issue, at the end of the day, will the gap between haves and have-nots be narrowed or widened by this development.”

Plenty of people I know take classes online as their primary route to education and others take classes online in addition to going to physical classes. As online courses and MOOC platforms become more and more prevalent, maybe more of us will be taking classes from the comfort of our couches.

Filed Under: Economics, Education, Sociology, Technology, Twitter

The Minutemen and the GOP’s Possible Changing Stance on Immigration

March 22, 2013 by

In February, more than 2,200 immigrants were released from detention due to budgetary savings measures much to the dismay of the GOP. Since then, immigration politics have been changing within the Republican party. In light of this, according to the New York Times, “A strategy report from the Republican National Committee urged the party to embrace legalization measures for illegal immigrants in the country. On Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a favorite of the Tea Party, also called for a path to legal status for those immigrants, saying they should be treated with ‘understanding and compassion.’” How these statements will be taken by other conservatives is unsure though it can be sure that it will not be agreed upon by all lawmakers, civilians, and notably militia groups like the Minutemen.

Immigration politics in this country have been tense for a while, especially in states like Arizona which has had a crackdown on illegal immigrants since 2010 both through state laws and the border-patrolling Minutemen who would not likely stand behind the remarks by Senator Paul. In Harel Shapira’s forthcoming book Waiting For José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America, Shapira explores who these Minutemen are. Shapira exposes that contrary to their simplistic depiction as right-wing fanatics, their desires to take on this job are also due to their longing for a sense of soldier camaraderie, identity and experience as well as nostalgia for an older America. Shapira examines who they are by neither condemning nor praising them; rather he looks for other reasons besides racism or anti-immigrant sentiment that draws these men to the border.

3-20 shapira joseThey live in the suburbs of Tennessee and Indiana. They fought in Vietnam and Desert Storm. They speak about an older, better America, an America that once was, and is no more. And for the past decade, they have come to the U.S. / Mexico border to hunt for illegal immigrants. Who are the Minutemen? Patriots? Racists? Vigilantes?

Harel Shapira lived with the Minutemen and patrolled the border with them, seeking neither to condemn nor praise them, but to understand who they are and what they do. Challenging simplistic depictions of these men as right-wing fanatics quick on the trigger, Shapira discovers a group of men who long for community and embrace the principles of civic engagement. Yet these desires and convictions have led them to a troubling place.

Shapira takes you to that place–a stretch of desert in southern Arizona, where he reveals that what draws these men to the border is not simply racism or anti-immigrant sentiments, but a chance to relive a sense of meaning and purpose rooted in an older life of soldiering. They come to the border not only in search of illegal immigrants, but of lost identities and experiences.

Harel Shapira is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin.

Keep an eye out for the book scheduled to be released in May 2013.

Filed Under: In the News, Sociology, Twitter

MacLeish’s New Book Highlights the Soldiers rather than the War

March 6, 2013 by

Growing up in the post-9/11 world meant a heightened sense of fear and awareness of a war away from home.  With more than a decade between then and now, much has changed including the faces of tomorrow’s soldiers. The kids that I sat with in my fourth grade classroom when the country was attacked are suiting up and shipping out to military bases with the Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force. From the time they enlist until the time they are finished with their military experience, outsiders looking in will not see anything that is not relayed through the media- but these are not the only stories about the war worth sharing.3-6 Making War

When we think of the war, chances are we do not think of the living situations, the relationships, and the trauma that are had by the soldiers who are fighting or who have fought. News stories about the war are concerned with who, what, where, why, and how of major incidents. Personal perspectives are rarely news worthy and are generally saved for personal storytelling. In his new book Making War at Fort Hood, MacLeish humanizes the wartime experience and reminds us that a war is not a one dimensional topic. What happened and why are usually what we read about but MacLeish examines the lives of soldiers and why their stories are equally as important.

MacLeish discusses some of the topics that he covers in his forthcoming book in an article for Publishers Weekly titled “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About War.” It is a good overview of what he covers in Making War at Fort Hood and why the are topics worth examining. It is a good place to start before picking up a copy of the book.

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About War

The first story in this book is about a soldier I met when I was doing research at and around the US Army’s Fort Hood, in central Texas, in 2008. In the book I call him Dime (the identities of all of my research subject are kept confidential). He was a tank driver who had survived multiple IED strikes and firefights during two tours in Iraq. One bomb attack left him trapped inside his tank for hours while it burned. He narrowly avoided another that hit the tank in front of him, the one his best friend was driving. When Dime and his fellow soldiers went to look for survivors, he told me, his friend’s body was just gone, completely destroyed. When I met Dime he had been diagnosed with severe orthopedic damage and a traumatic brain injury (TBI) from the bomb blasts, as well as posttraumatic stress disorder. He had been transferred into a medical hold company while his complex and debilitating injuries were evaluated and treated, and his days were filled with tests, briefings and doctor’s appointments. Dime clearly took pleasure in being a soldier and cared deeply about his comrades. But he also felt frustrated and bullied. He was grieving, in pain, disoriented from his head injury, numbed and sedated by a shifting regime of drugs, and lonely—he had lost friends in the war, and his wife left him during his first deployment and took their kids. He was angrily and anxiously waiting for the Army to decide what was wrong with him and when to let him go and to see what happened after that.

Most of the war stories that civilians are familiar with hinge on what war is about—why we are fighting, whether we are winning or losing, whether we should have gone to war in the first place. Or they heap those who fight with sentiment and cliché and try to take some virtue from that. In all such stories, the violence of war and the actual work of making it appear as the exception rather than the rule. All the harm that comes with war is cast as tragedy or side effect, something that should not have happened. And the stories wrap these unfortunate events up with a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end.

Read the FULL article.

 

Filed Under: Anthropology, Sociology, Twitter

Why We Should Settle

February 27, 2013 by

In an ideal life we would all have everything we could ever dream of. Sports cars, model spouses, and mansions in a swanky neighborhood would all be ours in our ideal life. However, reality says this probably will not all come to us as picture perfectly as we hoped, so we must settle for what we have. This may mean settling for your 1999 Honda Accord, your non-existent significant other, and the house you rent in Trenton. When we settle on something, whatever that may be, it becomes fixed. But as Robert E. Goodin explains in his book On Settling and as an article in The New Republic reiterates, settling does not mean completely giving up. Cass Sunstein for The New Republic says, “fixity is not forever.” Instead, settling is a way to put one’s mind to rest on one matter in order to be able to strive for other things. He writes:

When we settle, we hold something—a job, a relationship, a place, an activity—as fixed. He contrasts settling with “striving.” But his most striking claim is that settling is not an alternative to striving, but its complement. The reason is that human beings cannot strive unless they keep a number of aspects of their life fixed. In that sense, settling is a precondition for striving.

Settling should not necessarily be seen pejoratively. Instead, the positive value of settling should be acknowledged and used to one’s advantage. When you settle on one aspect of life, you free up your mind to strive for another. Settle for some things now so you can strive for bigger and better things, and who knows, somewhere down the line you may be able to trade in that pre-millennium make for something from this decade.

Read the full article here.

 

2-27 onsettling

In a culture that worships ceaseless striving, “settling” seems like giving up. But is it? On Settling defends the positive value of settling, explaining why this disdained practice is not only more realistic but more useful than an excessive ideal of striving. In fact, the book makes the case that we’d all be lost without settling–and that even to strive, one must first settle.

We may admire strivers and love the ideal of striving, but who of us could get through a day without settling? Real people, confronted with a complex problem, simply make do, settling for some resolution that, while almost certainly not the best that one could find by devoting limitless time and attention to the problem, is nonetheless good enough. Robert Goodin explores the dynamics of this process. These involve taking as fixed, for now, things that we reserve the right to reopen later (nothing is fixed for good, although events might always overtake us). We settle on some things in order to concentrate better on others. At the same time we realize we may need to come back later and reconsider those decisions. From settling on and settling for, to settling down and settling in, On Settling explains why settling is useful for planning, creating trust, and strengthening the social fabric–and why settling is different from compromise and resignation.

So, the next time you’re faced with a thorny problem, just settle. It’s no failure.

Robert E. Goodin is professor of government at the University of Essex and distinguished professor of philosophy and social and political theory at Australian National University.

You can preview the introduction of the book here.

Filed Under: Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology

Padgett & Powell Guest Bloggers for Orgtheory.net: Second Post

February 13, 2013 by

2-7 theemergenceJohn Padgett and Walter Powell, authors of The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, are guest bloggers for February for Orgtheory.net. In their latest blog, Padgett and Powell discuss some of the mechanisms that allow multiple networks to become synced for better productivity for an organization. They also give examples of each mechanism including some successes and failures that have resulted from their application.

John F. Padgett is professor of political science and (by courtesy) professor of sociology and history at the University of Chicago. Walter W. Powell is professor of education and (by courtesy) professor of sociology, organizational behavior, management science, communication, and public policy at Stanford University.

Check out part of their second blog below.

the emergence of organizations and markets, part 2: a guest post by john padgett and woody powell

Single autocatalytic networks generate life, but they do not generate novel forms of life. There is nothing outside of a single decontextualized network to bring in to recombine with what is already there. Self-organizing out of randomness into an equilibrium of reproducing transformations, the origin of life, was a nontrivial accomplishment, to be sure. But this is not quite speciation, which is emergence of one form of life out of another.

Transpositions and feedbacks among multiple networks are the sources of organizational novelty. In a multiple-network architecture, networks are the contexts of each other. Studying organizational novelty places a premium on measuring multiple social networks in interaction because that is the raw material for innovation. Subsequent cascades of death and reconstruction may or may not turn initial transpositions (innovations) across networks into system-wide invention.

Read the rest of the post here.

 

 

Filed Under: Economics, International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Twitter

John Padgett & Walter Powell: February Guest Bloggers for Orgtheory.net

February 7, 2013 by

John F. Padge2-7 theemergencett and Walter W. Powell, co-authors of The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, will be contributing to the orgtheory.net blog for the month. They will be discussing their book and other thoughts throughout the month. Fabio Rojas, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, says that their blog postings will be “*required* reading for sociologists, management scholars, political scientists, and economists.”

John F. Padgett is professor of political science and (by courtesy) professor of sociology and history at the University of Chicago. Walter W. Powell is professor of education and (by courtesy) professor of sociology, organizational behavior, management science, communication, and public policy at Stanford University.

Check out part of their first blog below.

emergence of organizations and markets, part I by padgett & powell

A guest post by John Padgett and Woody Powell about their new book The Emergence of Organizations and Markets:

Innovation in the sense of product design is a popular research topic today, because there is a lot of money in that. Innovation, however, in the deeper sense of new actors—new types of people, new organizational forms—is not even much on the research radar screen of contemporary social scientists, even though “speciation” (to use the biologists’ term for this) lies at the heart of historical change over the longue durée, both in biological evolution and in human history. Social science—meaning mostly economics, political science and sociology—is very good at understanding selection, both at the micro level of individual choice and at the macro level of institutional regulation and lock-in. But novelty, especially of actors but also of alternatives, has first to enter from off the stage of our collective imaginary for our existing theories to be able to go to work. Our analytical shears for trimming are sharp, but the life forces that push up novelty to be trimmed tend to escape our attention, much less our understanding. If this book accomplishes anything, we at least hope to put the research topic of speciation—the emergence of new organizational forms and people—on our collective agenda.

Read the full post here.

Filed Under: Economics, International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Twitter

Natasha Dow Shüll Discusses Gambling on the Leonard Lopate Show

February 6, 2013 by

2-4 addictionWho can resist the bright lights, the whirling noises, the chance of winning big on a casino slot machine? However, while the rewards can possibly be big, the consequences of gambling can land a person not only in debt but also in a place of addiction. Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, describes in her book how and why these flashy machines are able to place gamblers into a trance like state until they quit from physical or economic exhaustion. In a recent interview on the Leonard Lopate show, Dr. Shull discussed her book and how video slot machines are contributing to gambling addiction. Check out the interview below or here.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Anthropology, Interview, Sociology, Twitter
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