politics

KPFA in Berkely has a wonderful radio show called Against the Grain.   Tuesday’s show had an interview by the host C.S. Soong with William Irvine, a philosophy professor at Wayne State University.  The talk fouced on Irvine’s new book “A Giude to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.”  The book focuses on the anicent Greek/Roman philosophy of Stoicism.  In the interview, Irvine notes that the goal of the Stoics was “tranquility” or the moderation of passions and desires which often lead us towards emotional higs and lows.  He claims the stoics did this through reasoning.  If you want a brand new car that you don’t need, the Stoics prescribe that you think about your current car being stolen and how that loss would make you feel.  That in turn would make you appreciate your existing car more.

My policy class is looking at metaphors and symbols in politics and how they are used to frame debate about issues.  A growing consensus in emerging on our biological predispositions to become vulnerable to frames.  Matt Bai has a good New York Times Magazine article that describes the Democratic party’s love affair with George Lakoff and his theories of framing.  But listeinging to Irvine’s description of the stoics makes me think about how much we’ve allowed ourselves to succumb to emotion and desire in political discourse.  The Greek conception of man (people) was that they were half animal and half god.  The animal was the impulsive, irrational side and the god was the reasoned, logical side. I contend that our politics have drifted towards appealing to our “animal side.”  See Frontline’s great documentary The Persuaders for an example of emotional appeals.

Of course politicians have always appealed to lower instincts in making claims to power.  But do we have a responsibility to create a “push back” from the “god side.”

What are the consequences of policies that are sold to us using strong emotional appeals?  Should we as a society demand that our citizens work to cultivate virtues like tranquility and reason?  Or has the train left the station… message makers have become much too sophisticated at pushing our emotional buttons that reason’s not making a comeback, and it hasn’t been here for years  (apologies to L.L. Cool J).

If any of you are looking for a good text on race, ethnicity and American politics (of which there are very few), my colleague (and fellow Cuban) Jessica Lavariega Monforti has co-edited a volume that you might want to examine. She’s an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Texas – Pan American. The book is called Black and Latino/a Politics: Issues in Political Development in the United States (2006 Barnhardt and Ashe). She describes the rationale for the book below:

As students of urban, racial, and ethnic politics in the United States, we are intimately aware of the fact that very few issues embraced by U.S. officials and institutions over the past quarter century have excluded considerations of race and ethnicity, but this fact is not reflected in the literature of mainstream political science. We wanted to create an edited volume that speaks to this problem by looking at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and political development in the U.S.

In Black and Latino/a Politics, we have included chapters on identity, empowerment, political and social issues, political participation, black-brown coalitions, and public policy. Our hope was to produce a text that was comprehensive in nature, so we also included issues of gender and urban politics as well as analyses of institutions and organizations within these communities of color. There is no more important story to be told than the struggle by Blacks and Latina/os for power in the face of a multitude of constraints that seek to undermine the full flowering of Black and Latina/o strength in the political process.

The processes of governance, the distribution of political power and resources in society, and the emergence and movement of ideas in this country have been profoundly influenced by the existence, beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors of Latinos and Blacks. In other words, Blacks and Latinos have been active participants in the political development of this nation-state and the political institutions therein.

Inherently it seems as though we are headed toward a point in time where critical decisions about the future of Latino and African American political development will be made. New leaders will surface, new relationships will be cultivated, and old relationships may be reinvented to deal with some of the same trials and tribulations that the African American and Latino communities have been confronting for over 400 years. At present, it seems clear that we have a unique opportunity to again change the face of politics in the United States. For better or worse we have been able to determine why — but the questions of who, when, how, and where remain unanswered.

Done with Internet and Politics syllabus, on to Public Policy. Speaking of public policy (what you guys call Social Problems), if you guys aren’t aware of TED, it is an amazing teaching resource. I showed this Hans Rosling talk to my Research Methods class (It would work equally well for social inequality or race, class, gender). I don’t think I’ve ever seen students that excited about data! It wasn’t natural 😉

On to le liens épais I think that’s ThickLinks in French.
Women of the Klan – UC Press Blog

From Andrew – The Obama Effect?

Al Jazeera makes its Gaza coverage available to the public under Creative Commons license via Jo Ito’s blog

Great infographic on international migration in Good Magazine – from our friends at Sociological Images

and please indulge my soccer geekdom:

Landon Donovan with a nice goal in a friendly for Bayern Munich (around 5 minute mark)

Winter illness has impeded my blog posting for the past few days….

For anyone who’s interested in what I actually do for a paycheck, here’s my Internet and Politics syllabus for the fall (feel free to pick apart).  As befits a political scientist who blogs for a Sociology journal, the syllabus has a decidedly interdiscipinary bent.   If anyone has some reading suggestions…serve ’em up.

My hope is to incorporate the blog into the course discussion and vice versa.  I welcome the community to take part in our ongoing conversations.  I’ve used blogs in the classroom the past two semesters and I’ve found that the students learn a great deal from comments posted by faculty or students from other institutions.  It’s a great way to extend the conversation beyond the walls of the classroom.

I’m not sure what this says about me, but I’m addicted to the Lifehacker blog.  The site provides links to resources intended to simplify (hack) aspects of your life.  While most of the posts consist of tech stuff, there are also posts on finding holiday bargains or inexpensive things to do with your kids, etc.  The blog is one of many that feed a growing culture of “Life Hackers.”  Other blogs include Lifehack, Zen Habits, and 43 Folders.

The subculture is complete with its own bible.  Getting Things Done (GTD) a 2002 book written by David Allen, a California-based productivity consultant created a buzz among “life hackers.”  The organizational system detailed in the book (which I try to use myself) tries to help people organize their lives through an elaborate system of recording and lists.  The system has spawned a wave of practitioners providing their own variations on the system in the effort to create the perfect organizational system.

I’ve always thought this would be a great subculture for a sociologist to study (we political scientists don’t get to look at fun stuff like that, at least not pre-tenure).   What interests me is whether you could create similar subculture of “poli-hackers” or “power-hackers” people who share tips about how to more effecively access the political process.  It would be interesting to create a site where activists or lobbyists share what’s worked for them in the past.   It seems to me that if you can “geekify” the political process, the results would be interesting.

I know lots of people are on the Brand Obama bandwaggon, but I haven’t seen much discussion of the implications of Obama’s brand for governing. There is already a book out by Barry Liebert and Rick Faulk called Barack Inc. that promises to share with you the winning business lessons from the Obama campaign. The idea that a political campaign could have any insights for the private sector is pretty paradigm shaking. It’s hard for me to fathom a book detailing the marketing secrets for business from the Kerry campaign or even the Bush campaign.

As any popular book would do, they’ve broken the more complex reality of Obama’s branding success into a pithy sondbyte:

Be Cool, Be Social, Be the Change

I’m not sure what to make of the the “Be cool” or “Be the Change” stuff yet….it doesn’t seem too earthshaking, but I haven’t read the book. But what I am interested in seeing and thinking about for the next few years is how/whether the “be social” parts can translate into political capital. The “be social” part deals with the penetration of the campaign into multiple corners of the on-line social networking world.

What will it take to translate these micro-communities the Obama campaign built on various platforms into leverage that can be used to pressure congress into effecting policy change? Will the Obama campaign get out in front of developments in the Semantic web to create even more narrowly tailored communities? In the public policy literature we talk about epistemic communities of experts and interest groups that produce the ideas that shape policy debates. Will the Obama campaign try to create “super-epistemic” communitiies that can shape policy agendas? can they create targeted “flash” epistiemic communities to deal with pressing crises? We’ll know soon.

I saw this politically-flavored ad in New York City this weekend and it struck me as unusual.

In an election year, we can expect to see many product advertisements that utilize political imagery or poke fun at political culture. Along the same block, I saw a display featuring cardboard cutouts of the two presidential candidates bearing various wines and spirits. But most of these ads, do not take a political perspective or mount a critique. They tend to be of the “whether you support Obama or McCain” variety. This ad for a storage company make a very clear criticism of Sarah Palin — albeit on experiential and not policy grounds.

Is this actually unusual? Is it permissible because NYC is a fairly liberal place? Or perhaps because Obama-Biden are such clear frontrunner? What do you think?

I’ve been reading sociologist Amitai Etzioni’s thoughts on what he calls commutarianism.  He describes the Clinton presidency on the liberal blog, The Huffington Post, as defying liberal/conservative labels by being commutarian:

[Clinton] certainly did reveal some liberal proclivities, but his welfare reform was clearly in a conservative mode, and he capped most social programs in order to balance the budget. (He ended up generating a surplus which the Bush administration inherited and squandered). At other times, when looking for common ground, promoting volunteerism (AmeriCorps), and trying to defuse tensions between the races and between the religious right and the liberal secularists, Clinton was much more a communitarian than a liberal.

Communitarianism, a social philosophy centered around the concept of community, is hardly a household word and is very unlikely to become one. However, one should consider it — because Barack Obama is easily the most communitarian presidential candidate of all those we have seen for decades.

He later defines commutarianism as being focused on the importance of community, the common good, and service, contrasting it with divisive strategies such as identity politics.  

How does this fit in with the American ideal of individualism?  Hasn’t society become increasingly fragmented to the point where there isn’t a shared society or culture?  Could you just say that Clinton and Obama are simply being pragmatic in their approach?  Isn’t McCain a commutarian, as well?

Politics aside for a moment, I think there’s something to this idea of commutarianism, given sociological research on organizations, well entrenched in the workings of capitalism.  In task-oriented settings, you can have “communities of practice” that go beyond functional areas (e.g., marketing, finance, accounting, etc.) and even organizational boundaries (firms collaborating on innovations or dividing up specialized tasks).  It begs the question of what are the true drivers of collaboration in politics that go beyond immediate self-interest?  Is it trust?  Framing activities as uniting common causes?  All of the above?

I think it’s hard to be communitarian in certain contexts and one only has to look at office politics to see evidence of this.  Nevertheless, I think that as a philosophy that can be embedded in a set of values, commutarianism can foster a shift in priorities.  These shifts could be good or bad, so I don’t feel that commutarianism is a panacea.  I do feel that these shifts require a critical mass of shared values and the meanings behind them.  I don’t think a lot of this is new, but I think what is new is getting the general populace thinking and behaving in these terms and replicating this over time.

In all the years I’ve been following presidential elections, I’ve never heard someone from an audience call the candidate from the opposing party “a terrorist.”

Dana Milbank at the Washington post reported a similar incident at a Palin rally in florida where members of the crowd allegedly yelled “kill him” regarding Obama during her speech. Regardless of your political persuasion, this has to be a bit unsettling. I fear we’re charting into an emotional storm as this election draws near. My hope is that Mccain’s attack during tonight’s debate will be about Obama’s economic and social liberalism as reflected in his voting record rather than this absurd guilt by association.

All of us in academia can probably be tarred with a similar brush. Is anyone who works with someone with controversial views forced to resign their jobs? As a graduate student I taught in the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado during the time Ward Churchill was a member of the department. Does that link me to Ward Churchill’s views? Should I have given up my teaching assistantship? Are all the members of the education department in which Bill Ayers teaches today complicit in his crimes and victims of poor judgment? How about all his students? Should they drop out of the university upon learning of their professor’s past?