{"id":1586,"date":"2010-04-07T11:04:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1586"},"modified":"2010-04-07T11:04:14","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:04:14","slug":"you-are-what-you-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2010\/04\/07\/you-are-what-you-read\/","title":{"rendered":"you are what you read"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish Times<\/a> commented on a recent craze among social science bloggers:<\/p>\n

When a viral craze spreads across the internet, it usually features cute cats or embarrassingly bad singing, or a combination of the two.<\/p>\n

Last month, however, a new idea caught the imagination of a certain corner of the web, and it was as far from feline karaoke as is possible to imagine. Tyler Cowen, the intimidatingly erudite US economist whose blog Marginal Revolution has become massively influential in recent years, started it all when he replied to a reader\u2019s suggestion to list the 10 books that most influenced his view of the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This quickly caught on:<\/p>\n

Within days, dozens of America\u2019s top blogging economists, political scientists, sociologists and pundits were busy composing lists of the books that influenced their thinking, and the conversation spread and spread.<\/p>\n

As an exercise, this was all quite instructive for readers, but it also served as a kind of intellectual arms race, with each blogger establishing their credentials via their chosen books. The competitive element was unmistakable, or in economics\u2019 parlance, there was a lot of signalling going on. Many of the lists were almost comically esoteric, as if to prove the individualism behind the intellectual journey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One particular sociologist attracted some attention:<\/p>\n

One of the most animated conversations followed the list created by Kieran Healy, an Irish sociologist at Duke University who is a member of the academic supergroup blog Crooked Timber. \u201cEveryone else is doing it, at least for \u2018American\/ white\/ politics\/ economics\/ mostly libertarian type guys\u2019 values of \u2018everyone\u2019,\u201d he wrote, and his terrifically diverse list, which features works by Clive James, Pierre Bourdieu and game theorist Thomas Schelling, as well as books on biomechanics, the collective dietary habits of ravens and power dynamics in medieval German society, led to a long and engaging discussion about what it is to be shaped and influenced by books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check out Healy’s list here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Irish Times commented on a recent craze among social science bloggers: When a viral craze spreads across the internet, it usually features cute cats or embarrassingly bad singing, or a combination of the two. Last month, however, a new idea caught the imagination of a certain corner of the web, and it was as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,34,665,12],"class_list":["post-1586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-education","tag-science","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1586"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}