Tom Standage on ancient social media: Papyrus, pamphlets and tweets

The Economist

La funesta manía de pensar

elblogdemontaner

Carlos Alberto Montaner/

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Si mañana un cataclismo, o un virus racista, destruyera todas las universidades de América Latina y España, la cultura planetaria apenas sufriría un imperceptible arañazo, especialmente en el terreno de la ciencia y la técnica, pero también en el de las humanidades y los estudias sociales.

El asunto es muy triste. Las universidades iberoamericanas no están entre las 150 mejores del planeta. Aunque son varios millares, son muy escasas las que figuran entre las 500 mejores del mundo. Las menos malas son algunas brasileras, chilenas, colombianas, argentinas, mexicanas y españolas. Las caribeñas y centroamericanas apenas comparecen en la lista, con la excepción de la costarricense en alguna facultad privilegiada.

¿Cómo lo sabemos? Porque anualmente se compilan varios índices de calidad universitaria en distintas latitudes y todos concuerdan en las conclusiones. Los más conocidos son los que confecciona el diario The Times de Londres, la Universidad Jiao Tong de Shanghái, la revista U.S. News and World Report de Estados Unidos y el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas de Madrid.

Para medir la excelencia de las instituciones tienen en cuenta las publicaciones en revistas acreditadas, la presencia en Internet, las veces que los artículos, libros o autores son citados, el número de profesores con Premios Nobel o Medallas Fields (matemáticas), el desempeño de los graduados y las opiniones de expertos. No se trata de ensalzar a algunos países y denigrar a otros. Intentan establecer cierta jerarquía. Sólo eso.   

Es una pena, porque la primera universidad que se fundó en el Nuevo Mundo fue la de Santo Domingo en 1538, prácticamente un siglo antes de Harvard. Poco después se crearon las de México y Lima en 1551. La de La Habana tiene casi 300 años y antecede en 20 a la de Princeton. Esa tradición ha servido de muy poco. Tal vez, incluso, ha sido una rémora.

Cuando comenzaron nuestras universidades en Hispanoamérica, todas legitimadas por la Corona española y operadas por frailes, el método de enseñanza y la filosofía que lo animaba se basaban en la Escolástica. Todas las verdades ya habían sido descubiertas por las autoridades religiosas. La labor del docente y del alumno (literalmente, “el nutrido”) era llegar a ese conocimiento mediante ejercicios memorísticos o juegos retóricos.

La universidad era para repetir, no para innovar. Recuérdese que uno de los delitos perseguidos por la Inquisición era la innovación. Todavía a menudo se cita la increíble frase del rector de la Universidad de Cervera, en Cataluña, al rey Fernando VII: “lejos de nosotros, majestad, la funesta manía de pensar”.

Naturalmente, se trata de un problema cultural. En nuestro mundillo iberoamericano no abunda, como en otras latitudes, la voluntad de cambiar, de innovar, de progresar, de encontrar nuevas y mejores formas de hacer las cosas. Vivimos en una cultura reiterativa, no transformativa.

Para nosotros una persona culta no es la que es capaz de modificar nuestro presente, sino la que retiene una asombrosa cantidad de información sobre el pasado. Vivimos dándole vueltas a lo que ocurrió hace mucho tiempo, lo que, por cierto, no nos ha salvado de cometer los mismos o parecidos errores una y otra vez, desmintiendo la inútil advertencia de Jorge Santayana (“Aquellos que no recuerdan el pasado están condenados a repetirlo”). Los latinoamericanos lo recordamos y lo repetimos.

No quiero decir, por supuesto, que las universidades latinoamericanas son inservibles. Eso sería una estupidez. Muchas de ellas gradúan personas  muy competentes. De algunas egresan magníficos médicos, abogados, dentistas, periodistas, economistas, ingenieros, expertos en cuestiones empresariales, y así hasta el medio centenar de profesionales valiosos, absolutamente indispensables para el buen funcionamiento de las sociedades.

Ese no es el problema. La consecuencia negativa del fenómeno de las culturas reiterativas es que viven parasitariamente a remolque de centros creativos radicados fuera de su perímetro. En gran medida, la extensión de nuestra vida y cómo la vamos a vivir, se dicta en esos sitios intelectualmente densos y generadores de ideas. De una forma perversa, sin darnos cuenta, continuamos calificando de “funesta manía” la actividad de pensar con nuestra propia cabeza. Y así nos va.

On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World

LibraryOfCongress

James Srodes discussed and signed his book, "On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World."

Speaker Biography: James Srodes is a former Washington bureau chief for Forbes and Financial World magazines. He is the author of several books, including "Franklin: The Essential Founding Father," "Allen Dulles: Master of Spies" and, most recently, "On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World."

UnderstandingSociety: What about Marx?

UnderstandingSociety

By Daniel Little
At various points since the death of Karl Marx in 1883 his work has been regarded as a dead issue -- no longer relevant, too ideological, methodologically flawed, too rooted in the nineteenth century. And yet each of these periods of extinction has been followed by a resurgence of interest in Marx's ideas, as new generations try to make sense of the tough and often cruel social conditions in which they find themselves. What are the important dimensions of theory that Marx presented through his writings? And how can any of these be considered valuable in trying to come to grips with the global, capitalist, turbulent, unequal, violent world that we now inhabit?

We might say that there are a small handful of key theoretical frameworks that Marx advocated.

Materialism as a methodology for social science. Social change is driven by material circumstances, the forces and relations of production. This encompasses the property system and the ensemble of technologies present in a given level of society. Materialism denies that ideas and thought drive social change; so religion, patriotism, nationalism, and ideologies of patriarchy are epiphenomena rather than originating causes.

Emphasis on the primacy of property and class. Sociologists and historians want to explain processes of social change. Marx puts it forward that the economic interests created by the property system in a given society create powerful foundations for collective social action.  Those who occupy positions of advantage within a given set of property relations want to do what they can to preserve those relations; and those who are disadvantaged by the property relations have a latent interest in mobilizing to change those relations. Persons who share a location in the property system constitute a class, and their interests are systematically different from those in other such positions.

A sketch of a theory of consciousness and culture. Institutions of consciousness and culture play a role in stabilizing and attacking the most important relations of domination in a society. Educational institutions, it is argued, prepare young people for their specific roles in society -- workers, managers, elites, sub-proletarians. So struggles over the content and form of the institutions of enculturation can be expected to be polarized along class lines. Less directly, Marxists like Gramsci have postulated that worldviews reflect life experiences; so elites create cultural worlds that are quite distinct from those imagined by subordinate groups.

A diagnosis of social ills including exploitation, alienation, and dehumanization of social relations. Exploitation has to do with the flow of wealth and material goods through the property system from producers to property-owners. Alienation has to do with the loss of autonomy and self-control that individuals have within a capitalist structure. Marx's distinctive addition to this idea is that this loss of autonomy has psychic consequences -- disaffection, lack of self-respect, depression. The dehumanization of social relations follows from the structure of the capitalist workplace -- workers and bosses, each related to the other through the workings of a command system. Wittgentstein got it right when he described the "slab" language game: the boss says "slab", and the worker produces a slab. There is nothing "I-thou" about this relation (Buber, I and Thou).

A theory of several distinct modes of production. Marx believes that history takes the form of a succession of separable and structurally distinct modes of production: ancient slavery, feudalism, and capitalism differ by the structure of the production system, the property system, and the technologies that each embodied. Marx's most extensive analysis of social formations is his treatment of the capitalist mode of production in Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy and the writings that were posthumously edited and published as volumes 2 and 3 of Capital.

A common thread through these framing ideas is the perspective of critique: a critical intelligence trying to understand why modern society produces such human misery. But even from the perspective of critique -- the perspective that tries to diagnose and understand the systemic flaws of contemporary society -- Marxism leaves quite a bit of terrain untouched: gender relations, racism, nationalism, and religious hatred, for example. Marxism doesn't do a good job of explaining a regime of sexual violence (rape in India); it doesn't have much to contribute to the rise of fascism; it doesn't have resources for understanding Islamo-phobia and hatred.  So Marxism is not a comprehensive theory of modern social failings; and we might say that its emphasis on economic conflict eclipses other forms of domination in ways that are actually harmful to our ability to improve our social relations.

Geoff Boucher takes up the issue of the continuing relevance of Marx in the contemporary world in Understanding Marxism. Here is how he opens the book:

Today, radical thinking about social alternatives stands under prohibition. According to defenders of the neoliberal transformation of every facet of human existence into a market, Marxism has failed…. Marx is dead; Marxism is finished -- and it must stay that way. (1)

But Boucher rejects this neoliberal consensus.

Marxism as an intellectual movement has been one of the most important and fertile contributions to twentieth-century thought. The influence of Marxism has been felt in every discipline, in the social sciences and interpretive humanities, from philosophy, through sociology and history, to literature. (2)

Here are the core reasons that Boucher offers for thinking that Marxism is still relevant in the twenty-first century:

1. Marxism is the most serious normative social-theoretical challenge to liberal forms of freedom that does not at the same time reject the modern world.
2. Marxism is the most sustained effort so far to think the present historically and to reflexively grasp thought itself within its socio-historical context. (2)

And later:

Marxism is a distinctively historical theory that normatively challenges liberalism in a way no other modern theory does. (3)

Much of Boucher's book contributes to one of two intellectual aims: to give a clear exposition of the most important of Marx's theoretical ideas; and to explicate the several "Marxisms" that followed in the twentieth century. The successive Marxisms take up the bulk of the book, with chapters on Classical Marxism, Hegelian Marxism, The Frankfurt School, Structural Marxism, Analytical Marxism, Critical Theory, and Post-Marxism. So the book provides very extensive explication of the theoretical ideas and developments that have grown out of the Marxist tradition.

What Boucher doesn't really provide is a clear rationale, based on contemporary sociology and history, for the conclusions he wants us to share about the continuing utility of Marxism as a framework for understanding the present and future. We don't get the reasoning that would support the affirmative ideas expressed above. The best rebuttal to the neoliberal triumphalism mentioned above is a compelling collection of sociological studies grounded in the perspectives mentioned above. Michael Burawoy's sociology of factories is a good example (e.g. Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism). But this isn't an approach that Boucher chooses to pursue.

So what about it? Is Marxism relevant today? Yes, if we can avoid the dogmatism and rigidity that were often associated with the tradition. Power, exploitation, class, structures of production and distribution, property relations, workplace hierarchy -- these features certainly continue to be an important part of our social world. We need to think of Marx's corpus as a multiple source of hypotheses and interpretations about how capitalism works. And we need to recognize fully that no theoretical framework captures the whole of history or society. Marxism is not a comprehensive theory of social organization and change. But it does provide a useful set of hypotheses about how some of the key social mechanisms work in a class-divided society. Seen from that perspective, Marxist thought serves as a sort of proto-paradigm or mental framework in terms of which to pursue more specific social and historical investigations.

«Clic, imprimir, arma», un documental sobre las armas impresas en 3D

Microsiervos

En Vice: Click, imprimir, arma: la historia del movimiento de las armas creadas con impresoras 3d,

Cody R. Wilson. Wilson, de 25 años, es un estudiante de derecho en la Universidad de Texas que está trabajando en la construcción de armas semiautomáticas utilizando una impresora 3D. La primera vez que escuché su nombre fue hablando con un colega después de que Wilson subiera un vídeo en Indiegogo demostrando qué intenciones tenía con su recién adquirida impresora Stratasys 3D (una impresora que Stratasys le arrebató más tarde).

Uno de los problemas más evidentes es que este tipo de armas son invisibles para los detectores de metales, aunque la munición tiene que seguir siendo necesariamente de verdad y hay que poder comprarla. El percutor también tiene que ser metálico, aunque se trate de un clavo.

En EE UU se ha levantado bastante revuelo con el asunto. El verdadero problema, según Businessweek, es que en aquel país es más fácil comprar un arma que imprimirla,

Let's All Calm Down About 3D Plastic Guns — Con algo de conocimientos es posible hacer un arma en el sótano de casa, y hay formas menos complicadas de conseguirlas que utilizando un equipo informático de 10.000 dólares. Por internet puedes comprar cualquier cosa desde una pistola Glock de 9 mm a un rifle semiautomático de tipo militar con cargador para 30 proyectiles.

En otros países, caso de España, es mucho más difícil comprar armas y munición de este tipo. Por ejemplo, en España «la razón de defensa de personas o bienes, por sí sola, no justifica la concesión de la licencia» para armas cortas, informa la Guardia Civil. En EE UU es al contrario, ésta razón es en la que se basa el derecho a tener y llevar armas.

De nuevo se demuestra —como leí por ahí hace poco, no recuerdo dónde— que según se utilice la tecnología puede ser buena o puede ser mala, pero nunca es neutra.

Financial strain pushes many veterans to the breaking point

inplainsight

Courtesy Adam Legg

Navy veteran Adam Legg said a long jobless spell after tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan left him feeling hopeless and led him to "go weeks without smiling, walking around like a shadow, like you're not there."

By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

Hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been flying home to a fresh fox hole: A debt crater that’s sucking in entire military families and could be helping to fuel the veteran suicide crisis.

Courtesy Adam Legg

"I was a watch commander where I had 25 to 30 
people working  beneath me, in charge of millions 
of dollars worth of ammunitions, weapons, vehicles, 
computers," said Adam Legg, a Navy veteran. "And 
then  when I come home, not only can I not find 
a job, I can't take care of my family."

A bad job market, a long backlog for federal disability benefits, and occasionally unwise spending habits have been conspiring to strain the financial and mental health of many veterans, experts say.

"We keep hearing of suicides rising. How much pressure do you think one person can take?" asks Christopher Fitzpatrick, deputy director of VeteransPlus, a nonprofit that has fielded more than 170,000 calls from ex-service members with imminent financial concerns. 

"No one wants to talk about the fact that there are other reasons, besides PTSD, for suicide at 2 in the morning. You know how we know? We have an online form people use to contact us, and we get those emails — they’re sent at 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning. People are reaching out, literally: 'Can you please help me? I’m losing everything.'"

It's a problem that could get even worse in coming years, with more than one million service members expected to make the transition to civilian life.

Navy veteran Adam Legg, 30, ran into financial trouble following two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. A jobless and hopeless period that began after his service separation in 2009 led him to "go weeks without smiling, walking around like a shadow, like you're not there," he said.

He couldn't secure a job at his local McDonald's or at dozens of other companies to which he applied in Central Florida. With a wife, Melissa, and a young daughter to feed, he maxed out a credit card that he was able to pay off with money he'd saved during his eight years in the Navy. 

'Very, very dark place'
But bigger bills — like the mortgage — went untouched. After losing his Florida home to foreclosure and two cars to repossession, Legg said he began to consider suicide. 

"When you feel like you can’t take care of your family, feed them, shelter them, it’s a very, very dark place. A feeling of uselessness that maybe they would be better off if you’re not around," Legg said. 

"We've been below the poverty line, absolutely. I was a watch commander where I had 25 to 30 people working beneath me, in charge of millions of dollars worth of ammunitions, weapons, vehicles, computers. And then when I come home, not only can I not find a job, I can’t take care of my family. If it weren’t for my wife, if she was not supportive the way she was, I really don’t think I’d be here right now."

According to VeteransPlus, fewer than 20 percent of their clients have stockpiled a six-month savings cushion while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan despite untaxed, hazardous-duty wages that fattened paychecks.

Some returning veterans planned to live off their credit cards until landing civilian work, even though the veteran unemployment rate is two points higher than the civilian rate, Fitzpatrick said. Some expected to support themselves via VA benefits, apparently unaware that average wait time for that money approaches — and sometimes eclipses — one year.  

The Pentagon urges military personnel and their families to bank some money while in the service. This year, during “Military Saves Week," service members were reminded to “set a goal, make a place and save automatically.” Service members also can take advantage of the Thrift Savings Plan, a federally sponsored retirement savings and investment program resembling a civilian 401(k).

But even some of those who build up savings while serving abroad find their stash exhausted after buying gifts for family and plucking shiny toys, like motorcycles, for themselves when they come home from war, according to VeteransPlus.

"We don’t like using the word ‘entitlement,’ but often that’s what it really is for these young men and women who feel like they’ve served their country and are coming home with some money and ‘now it’s my turn,’" Fitzpatrick said. 

Move west, young man
For Legg, the way out was to escape Florida, not his life. He and his wife packed up their daughter, dog, cat and remaining belongings and recently drove to the Pacific Northwest. Two things lured the Legg family to Baker City, Ore.: a lower cost of living and its proximity to a military-friendly college, Eastern Oregon University. 

He's now a full-time student, living off of his GI Bill and his VA benefits for a diagnosed anxiety disorder (not PTSD), damaged knees, a bad back, and an injured left arm — combat baggage that requires daily Vicodin consumption. They live in a small, rented house.

Melissa was scheduled to deliver their second child last Wednesday. Soon, Legg plans to file for bankruptcy. 

Courtesy Adam Legg/ Navy veteran Adam Legg and 

his family moved to Oregon from Florida.

"I have no choice. We're at that rock bottom line," he said. "I'm not the only one. Of the (veteran) friends I've kept up with, most are struggling." 

Many veterans panic when they face getting kicked out of their homes, or must decide between buying food or diapers, said Kristy Kauffman, executive director of Code of Support, an Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit that proclaims to "bridge the gap between civilian and military America."

"It happens far too often. We get at least one call, email, or referral every week," she said.

Kaufmann agrees with Fitzpatrick that poverty is one factor behind the veteran suicide rate, adding: "It does increase the risk." 

"The vast majority of those who have worn the uniform," she said, "are imbued with a strong sense of mission and pride in 'getting it done.' For those who have trouble reintegrating into the civilian world — whether due to physical or mental health issues, or lack of employment opportunities — it's that loss of mission that seems most debilitating."

REVIEW—The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov

ClubOrlov
By Michael C. Ruppert

www.transitionnetwork.org

The writing of this book was a rotten job, but it was absolutely necessary. If someone had to do it, I am very glad that it was Dmitry Orlov. Without his wit, alacrity and experience, the task of beating the horse of the Cartesian approach to understanding our dying world to death would have resulted in something unbearably maddening, dry and uninspiring. In this book he sneaks some LOLROF side-splitters in when you least expect them. One gathers from Orlov’s painstaking efforts, the futility of looking to outdated constructs and philosophies for understanding and relief from a crisis that demands complete innovation and inspiration.

Reading closely, one sees Orlov carefully planting seeds of reconciliation with our planet and each other throughout—as a fundamental baseline. He arrives at places outside the box of the current meme by using methodologies and analyses that are sacramental within the meme. That’s an achievement. Perhaps in his next book he will stand on that ground more forcefully and tell us what he sees. We don’t need to understand collapse right now as much as we need to survive it. And that is where Dmitry Orlov rises through the rubble and gives us magnificent gems like this: “At the rock bottom of human survival, there is no individual and there is no state; there is only the family, or, if there isn’t, there is something that’s not quite human—or there is nothing at all.”

’The new normal’: Cohabitation on the rise, study finds

vitals

Marisa Guzman-Aloia

Melissa Melms, 25, and Jonathan Mills, 29, moved into her Hoboken, N.J., apartment 18 months ago. Now they're engaged. Living together was an expected part of the journey, says Melms, who blogged about her experience.

By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Writer, NBC News

More women are choosing to live with men first without marriage and more of those relationships are lasting longer, according to a new government study that tracks the continuing climb of cohabitation in the U.S.

Nearly half of women in what researchers call "first unions" with men -- 48 percent -- moved in with no wedding vows according to interviews conducted between 2006 and 2010, up from 43 percent in 2002 and 34 percent in 1995.

About 40 percent of those relationships became marriages after three years, but about 32 percent continued as cohabitations, suggesting an important new role for the arrangement once known as “shacking up,” says one researcher.

“It’s becoming more acceptable to be in a long-term, committed relationship without a legal document,” says Pamela J. Smock, director and research professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

By the time they’re 20, 1 in 4 women ages 15 to 44 in the U.S. have lived with a man, and by the time they’re 30, that ratio climbs to 3 in 4, the new study shows.

“The question becomes not who cohabits, but who doesn’t?” Smock says.

The survey relies primarily on information from a sample of 12,279 women interviewed between 2006 and 2010 as part of the federal National Survey of Family Growth, with data from previous reports in 1995 and 2002.

Keep reading on vitals >>

Net neutrality

MercatusCenter

New thinking about social systems

understandingsociety
By Daniel Little

There is a great deal of important international work underway today within the philosophy of social science on the general topic of social ontology. How do social structures relate to the actions of socially situated actors? How does causation work in the social realm? Can we say anything rigorous about the nature of "levels" of the social world -- micro, meso, and macro? And is there such a thing as an "emergent" social property or entity?

Sociologists and philosophers in Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, Belgium, France, Italy, and North America have undertaken serious work on these topics, and they constitute a dynamic network of thinking and debating. Some of the longstanding dualities in philosophy and sociology are questioned: individualism versus holism, micro versus macro, analytic versus continental, structure versus agent. Sociologists whose dispositions incline towards the importance of social structures are convening with rational choice theorists and game theorists; analytic sociologists are debating ontology with emergentists; and the field is displaying an energetic and productive degree of ferment.

The people whose work I am thinking of here are a motley group: Peter Hedstrom, Hans Joas, Petri Ylikoski, Bert Leuridan, Margaret Archer, Gianluca Manzo, Philippo Barbera, Pierre Demeulenaere, Julian Reiss, Rainer Greshoff, Dave Elder-Vass, Jeroen Van Bouwel, Mohamed Cherkaoui, ... And it is roughly as challenging to keep clearly in mind the manifold debates that are unfolding as it is to watch the Indianapolis 500 as the cars rocket by at 200 miles an hour. Some of these contributors are long-established scholars with huge reputations; others are young scholars with wickedly sharp minds and awesome work habits. And frankly, I'm at least as impressed with the younger generation as the elder.

One recent book that stands out as a key contribution that permits a degree of geolocation within these tangled debates is Poe Wan's Reframing the Social: Emergentist Systemism and Social Theory. Wan seems to have read every word of the debates, and he is ready to help interested parties take stock of the various theoretical perspectives.

The key axis in Wan's work -- here and elsewhere -- is that defined by Niklas Luhmann and Mario Bunge on the topic of emergent social systems. Wan is persuaded that social properties are "emergent" in some important sense, and he also seems to believe that the ideas of system and complexity are important components of our vocabulary for social ontology. But how should we understand these ideas? Luhmann's theory tends towards the position of holism, whereas Bunge's position allows that there is an intelligible connection between upper-level properties and micro-level facts and he focuses his theory of explanation on finding underlying mechanisms of various social outcomes. Wan refers to Bunge's approach as "rational emergentism" (68). Wan is respectful towards each of these theories, but he clearly favors that put forward by Bunge. Like Bunge, Wan too favors the focus on mechanisms; he admires Bunge's insistence on paying attention to the details of existing research in the natural and social sciences; and most importantly, he endorses Bunge's view that our theories of "emergent" social phenomena must be grounded in a theory of the actor.

Here is how Wan characterizes Bunge's systems theory and its relationship to a theory of the actor:

Bunge's emergentist systemism is best construed as a version of action-systems theory ..., because Bunge states explicitly that "the features of a social system depend upon the nature, strength, and variability of social relations, which in turn are reducible to social actions." (6)

And Wan believes that Bunge's approach provides a robust way of conceptualizing the nature of the social realm:

In Chapter 5 I argue for a systems approach that is ontologically sound (that is to say, transcending both holism [macro-reductionism] and individualism [micro-reductionism]), with due consideration given to the role of human factors and their actions in designing, maintaining, improving, repairing or dismantling social systems. (10)

Wan also believes that Bunge's CESM model is a helpful one for thinking about social ontology and explanation.  This model incorporates composition, environment, structure, and mechanisms. For a given social entity we want to know what it is composed of; what are the features of the environment within which it functions; how is it arranged internally; and how does it work (55).

Another important part of Wan's approach is his affinity with the social theories of the critical realists -- Bhaskar, Asher, Elder-Vass. Fundamentally this comes down to the view that social structures have real causal powers, along the lines of Rom Harre's meaning of this term (110, 119, 121).

Reframing the Social is an important contribution to current debates about the nature of the social. And I agree with him that the question of social ontology is a fundamental one; perhaps more so than the issues of the epistemology of the social sciences that have generally played first violin. Further, Wan does a good job of showing how these debates are relevant to the emerging framework of analytical sociology -- sometimes in ways that cast doubt on some of the guiding presuppositions of that field. In particular, the aggregative strategy of explanation that is favored by AS is questionable once we give credence to the idea that social structures possess autonomous causal powers. Along with Dave Elder-Vass's The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency, this book stands as an important alternative to Hedstrom's Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology.

Here is a nice passage from Durkheim's Rules of Sociological Method that Wan quotes on the subject of emergence:

Would You Eat Steak From a Printer?

freakonomics

(Photo: Cea)

We’ve talked before about one possible future of food production: food printers.  Andras Forgacs is the CEO of a company called Modern Meadow, which is working on printing leather and meat products. He recently took questions on reddit.com; here’s his take on his company’s progress with replicating hamburger and steak:

Real steak is a big stretch. It won’t be the first product since steak is very hard to make for now. Instead, the first wave of meat products to be made with this approach will likely be minced meats (burgers, sausages, etc.) and pates (goose liver pate, etc.). Also seafood is an early possibility since the texture requires may be easier to achieve than premium cuts.

While I doubt anyone will make commercial quantities of premium steak within 10 years, we will eventually get there but it will be an Nth generation product.

And here’s an interesting talk Forgacs gave on the technology:

(HT: Daily Dish)

El Índice de Felicidad Planetaria de Nic Marks

golem

El estadístico Nic Marks pregunta por qué medimos el éxito de una nación por la productividad, en lugar de hacerlo por la felicidad y el bienestar de su pueblo. Presenta el Índice de Felicidad Planetaria, que indica el bienestar nacional en función del uso de recursos (porque una vida feliz no tiene que costar la Tierra). ¿Qué países están mejor ubicados en el IFP? Tal vez te sorprenda.

¿Apagarías un robot que te suplicara que por favor no lo hicieras?

microsiervos

El experimento hay que verlo: es prácticamente la misma escena que cuando Dave Bowman quiere desconectar a HAL en 2001: Una odisea del espacio. Básicamente consiste en apagar un robot tecleando una secuencia en un ordenador. La complicación es que la criatura mecánica tiene rasgos humanos, hace gestos, habla y te suplica amablemente que no lo desconectes.

En este experimento –que es de hace un par de años ya– llevado a cabo por Bartneck, van der Hoek, Mubin y Mahmud se concluyó que los voluntarios tardaban más del triple en apagar al robot si era amable e «inteligente» (34 segundos) frente a cuando era irascible y no mostraba signos de inteligencia (11 segundos).

La cuestión es: ¿llegará un momento en que nuestra humanidad nos impida apagar a un robot que suplica por su «vida»? ¿Será esa la señal de que ha alcanzado el nivel de la inteligencia artificial? O, como se pregunta Jacob Sloan de Disinfo:

¿Adquirirán las máquinas que fabricamos la habilidad de convencernos de que están, de hecho, vivas?

Human intelligence is declining according to Stanford geneticist

follow the money

http://rt.com/usa/news/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-531/

Ever can’t help but think you’re surrounded by idiots? A leading scientist at Stanford University thinks he has the answer, and the bad news is things aren’t likely to get any better.

Dr. Gerald Crabtree, a geneticist at Stanford, has published a study that he conducted to try and identify the progression of modern man’s intelligence. As it turns out, however, Dr. Crabtree’s research led him to believe that the collective mind of mankind has been on more or a less a downhill trajectory for quite some time.

According to his research, published in two parts starting with last year’s ‘Our fragile intellect. Part I,’ Dr. Crabtree thinks unavoidable changes in the genetic make-up coupled with modern technological advances has left humans, well, kind of stupid. He has recently published his follow-up analysis, and in it explains that of the roughly 5,000 genes he considered the basis for human intelligence, a number of mutations over the years has forced modern man to be only a portion as bright as his ancestors.

“New developments in genetics, anthropology and neurobiology predict that a very large number of genes underlie our intellectual and emotional abilities, making these abilities genetically surprisingly fragile,” he writes in part one of his research. “Analysis of human mutation rates and the number of genes required for human intellectual and emotional fitness indicates that we are almost certainly losing these abilities,” he adds in his latest report.

From there, the doctor goes on to explain that general mutations over the last few thousand years have left mankind increasingly unable to cope with certain situations that perhaps our ancestors would be more adapted to.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2000–6000 years ago. The basis for my wager comes from new developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology that make a clear prediction that our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile.”

According to the doctor, humans were at their most intelligent when “every individual was exposed to nature’s raw selective mechanisms on a daily basis.” Under those conditions, adaption, he argued, was much more of a matter than fight or flight. Rather, says the scientists, it was a sink or swim situation for generations upon generations.

“We, as a species, are surprisingly intellectually fragile and perhaps reached a peak 2,000 to 6,000 years ago,” he writes. “If selection is only slightly relaxed, one would still conclude that nearly all of us are compromised compared to our ancient ancestors of 3,000 to 6,000 years ago.”

———–

are we are smarter than 6000 years ago?..they had great minds who could read the stars and knew maths..they made pyramids back then..we cant copy that now to that sort of precision..we had to use our minds for everything to live and survive..we have better technology now but whats that mean for human brain development?..i think hes probably correct..

Is "soccer" an extended social thing?

understandingsociety

By Daniel Little

Some social entities are compact and well bounded -- FEMA as a federal emergency bureau, the IBM Corporation, the Southern Poverty Law Center. In each case we can identify the people, institutions, and powers that constitute the entity. But what about social configurations that don't have this degree of coherence? Can we nonetheless regard these sprawling and heterogeneous social configurations as "things" in the social world?

Take as an example the sprawling worldwide phenomenon of competitive soccer. Soccer is an amalgam of many kinds of social things. It a sport governed by a set of internationally recognized rules. It is a set of firms (teams) which employ persons (players) to compete with each other. It is an extended network of youth leagues that engage in organized competition. It is a complex and shifting set of images and representations in media, film, and popular culture. It is a much larger population of children and youth who play pick-up games with each other, cheer for their favorite professional teams, and wear sports gear representing various athletes and teams.

So what aspects of these social realities hang together enough to constitute a social system or structure?

There seem to be a number of different kinds of social reality mentioned here.

(1) There are formal institutions: FIMA, the official rules of the sport, the businesses that employ and manage the players. These institutions embody a number of sets of rules of behavior within the sport and surrounding the sport.

(2) Second, there is a distributed body of knowledge through a very diverse and multinational population. Various people have expert knowledge of the rules and tactics of the sport. A wider group of people have a fund of knowledge of these rules and tactics, and also a fund of knowledge about the teams and players. There are sports marketers, entrepreneurs, schedulers, trainers, and agents who support the business activities of the sport, and they too have bodies of specialized knowledge.

(3) There are countless specialized individuals throughout the world who play distinctive roles and who orient their behavior to the reality of soccer as it confronts them: players, owners, coaches, physicians, officials, agents, promoters, investors, and so on.

(4) There are institutions and practices through which participants learn their roles and refine their skills.

These various bodies of social activity also have a number of systemic relations with each other. Children learn about soccer through television, school competition, and interactions with each other. Owners influence the evolution of the rules of the game. Apparel makers promote the stars. The workings of the mass media and the schooling institutions have important effects on the knowledge system of young players and fans.

The institutions governing the professional play of the game interact with the commerce of the game: broadcasters, networks, sports agents. These interactions take the form of dynamic networks of individuals with interests and resources through which they pursue their interests. These are social-causal relations that proceed through the strategic efforts of individuals with varying levels of power and influence.

So what about the original question -- is soccer a social thing? I'm inclined to argue that it isn't, and that it is more reasonable to think of it as a congeries of interrelated social phenomena. The internal components are too heterogeneous and too densely interconnected to non-soccer stuff to make the whole an entity. And the soccer world is too lacking of clear boundaries from other social activities to comfortably count as a thing.

This analysis seems to work for a wide range of other social nouns as well: the theatre world, cybercrime, higher education, human trafficking, and so on, more or less indefinitely. We know what we are talking about when we use these nouns. But they refer to widely heterogeneous sets of social activity, practice, and institution. It is hard to think of analogous terms in the natural sciences, but perhaps some concepts from biology come closest. Concepts like habitat, ecology, and predator-prey system seem to encompass some of the same features of complexity and open-endedness that characterize "soccer". It is not a perfect analogy, however, and the social umbrella terms ontology seem substantially more open-ended.

This discussion perhaps illustrates some of the difficulties that arise in articulating a detailed account of a social ontology. An ontology is intended to tell us what exists in a particular realm. But in the case of the social world it appears that there appear to be gray areas -- nouns that we use comfortably, but that don't clearly succeed in referring to a distinctive thing or set of things.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz on the Power of Love

ForaTv

The ontology of power

Understandingsociety
By  Daniel Little

There have been quite a few posts on the concept of power over the years in this blog (link). This continues to be an intriguing subject for me. Fundamentally the question of the moment is this: how does "power" fit into a social ontology of the kinds of things that exist in the social world? Does "power" exist, or is it a term that encompasses a range of other social things and relations? At one point I characterized power as an "influence" concept (link), analogous to "is humorous," "is rude," or "is charismatic". In each case the concept is defined in terms of a capacity possessed by the agent to influence certain kinds of behaviors by others around him or her.  Along these lines we might define power as a feature of an individual as follows:

Caesar is powerful =df Caesar has access to social levers of coercion that permit him to coerce certain kinds of behavior by others.

Those levers might include --

• command of military or paramilitary forces
• relations with conformant legislators positioned to enact legislation and regulation
• relations with conformant private citizens positioned to coerce their dependents to behave this way or that

On this approach, "power" is a dispositional concept attaching to individuals and invoking access to certain kinds of instruments of coercion.

What is "coercion"? This is a topic that Robert Nozick picked up early in his career (“Coercion” in Philosophy, Science, and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel). We might define coercion very simply in terms of an actor's ability to influence the terms of choice that confront another actor. The Godfather put it best: "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse." Here is a possible definition:

x coerces y =df x creates a choice situation for y in which the costs of choosing other available options are unacceptably high, leaving only O_n+1 to be chosen.

(Here is an article on coercion in SEP; link.)

We can then broaden this concept to groups in society by postulating that certain groups have greater access to the levers of coercion than others. So we might say that "capitalists have more power than workers" because capitalists have access to the lever of unemployment, whereas workers have access only to the power to withhold their labor at substantial personal and familial cost. And we might say that organized crime lords have more power than shopkeepers because the criminals have greater ability to use and threaten violence against the shopkeeper than the reciprocal.

We can also broaden the concept by grouping the levers of coercion into different families: economic coercion, physical coercion, community coercion (shunning within a religious community, for example), … This allows us to identify the sources of power within a given society. Individuals and groups who are favorably positioned with respect to these different categories of instruments of coercion are more powerful than others.

What this account leaves out is the range of "soft" power associated with framing and ideology. This is a different avenue of social influence. It is possible to impel individuals or groups towards certain kinds of actions by shaping their beliefs and cognitive-affective frameworks. Using the media to shift the terms of debate over a policy -- taxing the rich at higher rates or providing universal health insurance -- is a way of exerting power without coercion.

A few features of "power" emerge from these observations. First, power is a relational concept. An individual possesses power over other individuals (relation 1) and does so in virtue of the relations he bears to other persons and institutions (relation 2). Second, power is the activity side of structure: structures and sets of social relations constitute the environment within which individuals are empowered to exercise power over others. The structures perdure, and individuals act within their elements to exert their will over others. And third, power is distributed over many individuals and groups within society at a time. But it is fluid and subject to fluctuations as structures and individuals change. Dick Cheney was powerful at one point in time but not at other points. And what changed was not Cheney but the levers of power and social networks to which he had access.

This seems to imply that power is not itself a "thing" within a reasonable social ontology. It is rather a relational characteristic that exists at various social locations depending on the connections those locations have to the levers of influence over individuals and groups.

(We might speculate that there is an art to exercising power that means that not everyone is equally adept at the activity. Being well situated with respect to the levers of influence is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for being powerful.)

This account lines up well with some aspects of Steven Lukes' analysis of power in his classic book, Power: A Radical View (link). It also aligns well with Michael Mann's definition of social power in The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 and elsewhere: "My earlier work identified four primary 'sources of social power' in human societies: ideological, economic, military, and political" (Fascists, 5).

Character and authenticity

UnderstandingSociety

Daniel Little 

Image: Molière's Tartuffe, Comédie Française

When we judge that a person has acted on the basis of character in a given situation, we are implying a judgment about his or her inner constitution, and we are judging that the action derived "authentically" from the individual's underlying traits. Character and authenticity go hand in hand.

So what is "authenticity" when it comes to action? It seems to come down to this. When we talk about authenticity, we are presupposing that a person has a real, though unobservable, inner nature, and we are asserting that he/she acts authentically when actions derive from or reflect that inner nature. This is a kind of moral psychological realism: we work on the assumption that there are real inner features of personality and character that influence (portions of) the individual's behavior.

There are many other kinds of judgments that we make about other people's actions that suggest the opposite of authenticity: pretense, guile, manipulation, scripted, self-flattering, role-playing, acting. What these descriptors have in common is the idea of an individual choosing a series of actions and a style of action that is intended to convey a particular impression of the actor, irrespective of the actor's "true" nature, thoughts, and intentions. There is a disjunction between semblance (based on actions) and self (based on the actor's inner subjective reality). Tartuffe's actions in Molière's comedy are inauthentic and insincere; Tartuffe skillfully shapes his behavior to evoke specific reactions from others.  Politicians come to mind as we consider this list of features of action -- persons who seem always to be playing a role to cultivate positive reactions from others for the sake of electoral gain, with no evidence of authenticity.

Consider the example of Will Kane in High Noon, played in 1952 by Gary Cooper. Will Kane is a small-town marshall who is placed in a position of having to decide whether to stand and fight the armed men coming to kill him, or to slip out of town with a good head start -- and leave the town to the violent depredations of the outlaws. He strives first to gain a collective defense of the town, but all the town worthies suddenly find that they have other urgent appointments. And his deputy Harvey Pell takes this moment to allow his long-standing grievances to boil over and to walk away. So it is either stand alone or flee. He stays.

So how are we to understand Kane's choice? The movie's original poster gives one interpretation: "the story of a man who was too proud to run!" This isn't a particularly satisfying interpretation, though, in that it seems to trivialize his choice. Pride seems like a superficial motivation -- along the lines of "Robert was too proud to ask his boss for a loan for taxi fare when he realized he had forgotten his wallet." Pride seems to be a motivation that has to do with avoiding embarrassment rather than the loftier motivations of character and sacrifice.

Here is a somewhat different line of thought: Kane has learned to become a certain kind of person -- a person who doesn't bow easily to threats, a person who cares about his neighbors and friends, a person who loathes the violent bullying of the outlaw. On this line of thought, Kane has grown into a certain kind of character, which leads him to act in ways that seem contrary to his self-interest. He resists intimidation; we would also expect him to resist subornment or bribery.

Another possibility is that Kane possesses a deeply engrained role responsibility: it is his job as marshall to take risks to defend the town. (It's no longer his job, in fact, since he has resigned in deference to the pacifist convictions of his soon-to-be wife, Amy Fowler, before the crisis began.) But we might speculate that his sense of duty prevails over the fact of risk and the coincidence of having given up his badge; he is the only person on the scene who can or will oppose Frank Miller's gunmen.

There are several entwined complexities in this short discussion. One is the fact that the examples used here are drawn from fiction; so Tartuffe and Will Kane are both played by actors representing their actions and motivations. Certainly it would be a category mistake to judge that "Gary Cooper displayed great character in High Noon"; it is the depiction rather than the performer that needs analysis here.

Second, there is the realism point made above: the idea that the individual has a core set of characteristics that are "really" part of his or her makeup. Without this assumption, the idea of authenticity doesn't have traction. But this takes us in the direction of a real "self" which is the author of one's actions; and there are many reasons for thinking that this is an over-simplification of action and agency. Briefly, it is plausible that an actor's choices derive both from features of the self and the situation of action and the interplay of the actions of others. So script, response, and self all seem to come into the situation of action.

Moreover, even if the realism assumption is justified, character is only one part of the "real" self. One can be inauthentic by violating the impulses of his/her character; but likewise inauthenticity can derive from a deviation between beliefs and thoughts and actions. Iago is inauthentic because he pretends loyalty to Othello, whereas he is secretly disloyal.

And third, it is possible that the relation between "character" and "role" is not as contradictory as is suggested here. It may be that the role sets some of the parameters of the character and serves to reinforce one set of actions over another in particular circumstances of choice. The fact that Will Kane was regarded by others as an honorable and courageous man may be part of the explanation of the fact that he behaved in an honorable and courageous way.

(Here is an interesting source that provides examples of action driven by character in real life -- Bob Blauner's account of the professors in the University of California who resisted McCarthyism at the cost of their jobs; Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath.)

Avital Ronell: The Day Off [forgiveness, drugs, ontic, ontological, friendship, blush,...]

egsvideo

Avital Ronell discusses the concepts of forgiveness, drugs, ontic, ontological, friendship, blush, nausea, otherness, alterity, referring to Heidegger, Holderlin, Levinas, Susan Sontag, Lyotard, Kleist, Nietzsche, Wagner, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, Alfred Hitchcock, Hegel. Free public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies Department Program in 2012. EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, Avital Ronell 2012.

Avital Ronell is Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project. She is a member of the faculty of the European Graduate School, interested in Literary and other discourses, feminism, philosophy, technology and media, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, performance art, and has also written as a literary critic, a feminist, and philosopher.

Avital Ronell was born in Prague to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia. She received a B.A. in 1974 from Middlebury, studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin, received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979. Avital Ronell taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1984-1995 and at New York University from 1995 to the present. She served as Chair of the Department of German from Spring 1997 to Spring 2005. She taught an annual seminar in Literature & Philosophy at NYU with Professor Jacques Derrida and has taught with Professor Helene Cixous at Université of Paris VIII. She regularly teaches at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and in Mexico. She was invited by the Humanities Council to offer a seminar at Princeton University in spring 2006.

Avital Ronell has produced English translations of Derrida's work.Her books and works include: The Uber Reader: Selected Works of Avital Ronell Ed. Diane Davis. 2006; 2005 The Test Drive, 2001 Stupidity, 1998 Finitude's Score Essays for the End of the Millennium , 1993 Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania, 1993 Dictations: On Haunted Writing, 1989 Telephone Book Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, 1989 The Ear of the Other, trans., Jacques Derrida, and Dictations: On Haunted Writing 1986.

Sex and Punishment: Eric Berkowitz Talks 4,000 Years of Judging Desire

ReasonTV