Norman Birnbaum has an enjoyable piece in The Nation about the publication of The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills a collection of Mills vast writings, edited by John Summers.  I was struck by one particular passage in Birnbaum’s account of Mill’s view of the role of the intellectual in promoting societal transformation.

the new bearers of a project of social transformation were the intellectual vanguard. Allowed by society to think, but told not to think too much, they resented being denied autonomy–or ascribed the role of court jesters. In the American ’50s, Mills and others across the political spectrum were described not as social thinkers but as social critics. The implication was that the major structures of society would remain intact, no matter what was said.

While Mills might have been too sanguine about the prospects of a revolution by intellectuals (see Paris 1968), these words struck me, particularly combined with the discussion we’ve been having here about Jon Stewart’s interview with Jim Cramer on the Daily Show.   it seems that we have an obligation to do more, but we hide behind a cloak of scientific objectivity.  Others have written more eloquently than me about the rationalization of the academy, and I’m just as squeamish as the next guy about activist academics, but it seems to me there is a third way.  We should be producting knowledge that is relevant, critical, and empirical at the same time.  But more importantly, we should be more intentional about promoting that knowledge rather than allowing others to do so.

I recomment people read Harold Wilensky’s article in Contexts (I don’t just blog for the company, I”m also a client!) about the impediments to making one’s research policy relevant and the role that institutional structure plays in that process.  Props to ASA for trying to move in that direction.  In my discipline I think there exists a nagging belief that policy relevance means sacrificing empirical purity. I think I can have my empirical cake and eat policy relevance too (I’ve never understood what that expression means).

March 13th was Pink Friday in California. According to the official site, hundreds of thousands of teachers protested the issuance of 26,000 pink slips as a results of the state’s fiscal crisis. The state’s teachers hope California voters will support a pair of initiatives of the state ballot in late May designed to restore 8 billion dollars in budget cuts passed by the legislature last month.

meanwhile….

8,000 people attended a rally in Fullerton hosted by John and Ken, radio personalities at KFI. The hosts have been at the forefront a resurgent anti-tax movement in California and has been instrumental in pressuring legislators on the right to stand firm against taxes. The rally was intended to garner support for the defeat of California proposition 1A, a series of tax increases designed to fill the hole in the state’s budget.

Which rally would you have attended?

Time magazine says the suburbs are dying. To wit:

The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (on one-sixth of an acre [675 sq m] or more) in the U.S.

Does anyone really believe that there’s a great turning away from large-lot, big lawn, clu-de-sac street homes? We urbanists love to presume that the decline of the suburbs is just around the corner, but we simply don’t see that in consumer purchasing decisions. While there indeed is an urban renaissance, largely driven by twenty somethings and empty nesters seeking the energy and diversity of the city, that is not the mainstream American aspiration.

Here in Thousand Oaks, California, I see little evidence that the suburbs are dying. High end housing prices have fallen, but the market at the low and middle ends seem robust. You hear very little call for “infill development,” greater amenities, or better mass transit options. There still is a compulsion for personal/family isolation and the “capture” of social goods like public schools and crime prevention that many suburban areas provide.

From my own personal bubble, I’ll believe the decline of the suburbs thesis when large local employers like Amgen, Countrywide and Baxter pick up and leave because the amenity package my region provides is not interesting enough to retain knowledge workers. Richard Florida’s creative class thesis would presage this happening but it doesn’t appear to be happening. I’ll keep you posted.

Flowing Data has a great compendium of visualizations of the current economic crisis. Here’s my favorite (from The New York Times):

Nice balance between simplicity and complexity…kinda’ like good social science 🙂

Hey Sociologists (and other social-scientists), here’s what fancy-schmancy New York Times journalists think of your sister-profession:

Generally speaking, political writers don’t think so much of political scientists, either, mostly because anyone who has ever actually worked in or covered politics can tell you that, whatever else it may be, a science isn’t one of them. Politics is, after all, the business of humans attempting to triumph over their own disorder, insecurity, competitiveness, arrogance, and infidelity; make all the equations you want, but a lot of politics is simply tactile and visual, rather than empirical. My dinnertime conversation with three Iowans may not add up to a reliable portrait of the national consensus, but it’s often more illuminating than the dissertations of academics whose idea of seeing America is a trip to the local Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Ouch. The poly-sci tizzy starts here.

What I don’t get is why a solid, well-respected writer like Bai…whose articles I use in my classes from time to time, needs to go on some rant about an entire discipline? He sounds like he’s on the Jim Rome show. All he needed to do is end his passage by saying “rack ’em…I’m the pimp in the box!” Actually he could be making and interesting critique about our overemphasis on positivist/deductive approaches at the expense of inductive/interpretivist approaches (which can be just as rigorous and systematic), but instead of going there, he decides to “zing” an entire discipline instead of being reflective about its strengths and weaknesses. When New York Times feature writers are going for the verbal “smackdown,” I fear for our public discourse.

Rack ’em!

Why do folks have to hate on pedagogical innovation. The authors question the wisdom of offering these “frivolous” courses in the midst of an economic downturn. I think these classes are refreshingly creative! I only wish I would have thought of them first.

Among the gems:

Myth and Science Fiction: Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings
Cyberporn and Society
The Science of Harry Potter
Zombies in Popular Media
Joy of Garbage

Philosophy of the Simpsons? C’mon, I’d have taken that at 18!

Am I missing something? Is this taking “sacred” knowledge and making it “profane”? I mean we all toil in the salt mines trying to get our students to engage with ideas. What’s wrong with adding a little cheese to the broccoli? particularly when students are immersed in cheese? As long as it’s not swimming in cheese!

I wonder what students think of these types of courses. Do they want a bright line between their popular culture and their academe? Do we?

Anybody who reads this with regularity has probably come across me proclaiming my love for the article links in Bookforum. I’m not sure how they dredge the web for their content, but they never fail to uncover something interesting.

Today’s thought pellet comes from an interview with Christine Rosen in The University Bookman, a publication from the Russell Kirk Center (an “old school” conservative…I learned a great deal from The Conservative Mind — so props to him).

Rosen, who edits The New Atlantis: A Journal of Culture and Technology, questions a utopianist view of new technology and engages the potential deleterious effects on families.

The biggest challenge our new technologies pose for children and families is one of opportunity costs: too many of us are spending too much of our time in front of the screen instead of with each other in face-to-face communication, and this has adverse effects for families and for our culture.

I’m of two minds on this. Before I left for work today, I set my daughter up on a site called Strip Generator a site that allows her to make her own comic strips (don’t worry, she’s under supervision: no calls to Child Protective Services). I think new technology allows for a flowering of creative expression and I try to expose her to experiences on-line that engage her in creative production. But I must admit to wondering about the costs. Do these new technologies create habits that undermine face to face engagement. A possibility that I’m especially interested in as a political scientist who thinks about social capital and civic engagement.

As we think about how we deal with technological innovation in our own world, Rosen encourages us to think about how the Amish approach technology:

The Amish are a good (albeit rigorous) model for this. They are not opposed to every technology; but before they decide to incorporate one into their community, they first ask whether it will bolster or undermine the core values of the community.

This of course greatly offends libertarian sensitivities. Who is “the community” to tell me whether I can use a new technology. But if there are great social costs to new technology, we need to make it apparent. The literature thus far doesn’t seem to suggest a decline in face to face interaction as Internet usage increases, but we’re still at an early stage in this scholarship. there’s more thinkin’ and researchin’ to do.

I can hear my Internet and Politics students groaning 🙂 Stop hand wringing and let a 1,000 gadgets bloom! But I get paid to hand wring….so (not sure what the onomatopoeia for “hand wringing” is.

The very cool and practical Presentation Zen blog turned me on (I like the old sixties phrases) to a growing movement called Pecha Kucha Nights. The Presentation Zen site describes these gatherings, now taking place in over 100 countries, where people must share ideas in a condensed format:

You must use 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, as you tell your story. That’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Slides advance automatically and when you’re done you’re done. That’s it. Sit down. The objective of these simple but tight restraints is to keep the presentations brief and focused and to give more people a chance to present in a single night.

Here is an example of a Pecha Kucha presentation from Dan Pink on public signs (see his article on the topic in Wired).

i often wonder what would happen if more academics (particularly sociologists) played with turning their work into Pecha Kucha presentations. What would it look like if we created “community nights” where faculty at a particular institution or a group of institutions would present these 7 minute Pecha Kucha presentations? How would it change our relationship with the non-academic world?

In the continuing effort to tweak my blog posts to suit my narrow interests, I’m starting a section where I briefly summarize a text or article of which I’ve read a part but would like to read more. I’m starting with Chiara Bottici’s A Philosophy of Political Myth.

Why read more?

Bottici takes on a challenge in political science by exploring the distinction between myths and other aspects of language (symbols, stories, etc.) In my field of public policy there are numerous conceptual terms out there that roughly correspond to myths, narratives and symbols — causal stories, generative frames, narratives, etc. I actually wrote a comps question about this years ago and hope to someday dust it off and build on it (dream on, me!). Two passages in the sample chapter of Bottici’s book that provide, if not conceptual clarity, then food for thought. One is defining myth as linked to a purpose, or a specific explanation of how the world works. In this view, myths are used to make sense of the world.

In order to work as a myth, a narrative must always answer a need for significance (Bedeutsamkeit). If it cannot do so, it simply ceases to be a myth (Blumenberg 1985).

She then goes on to counterpose this instrumental view of myth with a view informed by Wittgenstein’s view of language (of which I admit I’m entirely ignorant).

Following Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, it may be said that to interrogate myths from the standpoint of their true or false account means to assume too limited a view of what human language and meanings are about: human beings are ceremonious animals, who, with their language, perform innumerable actions that are not based on any hypothesis about the constitution of the world (Wittgenstein 1979).

It seems as if much of our work accepts the former definition of myth rather than the latter. But at what price? Do we run the risk of reifying myths and attaching a convenient language to them when in actuality they are experienced differentially by those who adopt them (and in ways that social scientists really can’t do much with). Are the myths adopted after 9-11 less about trying to explain how the world works and more an elaborate performance intended to reduce anxiety? How does that change the way we study frames? narratives?

I need to read more.

Anybody else unsettled by 13 year olds promoting books on politics and giving rousing political speeches? He’s actually not bad, but what ever happened to video games and pick-up basketball?

At the very least, you can show this to your undergrads when you need to light a fire under them!