Category: politics
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DIY Thursday: Carnivalesquing the grocery store
Bartholomew Fair As epitomized in Ben Jonson’s comedy Bartholomew Fayre (1614), the fair was a week-long carnival of commerce, pleasure-seeking, marvels, and delights. In Jonson’s rendering, the meaningful social order was also overturned for a time, with the high being brought low and the low high. For us, the lesson is that social status, good reputation, and…
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Hustle hustle hustle (Part 1)
This is Part 1 of a 3-part series. Below, I pose a set of questions to make you think about the nature and prevalence of hustling. In Part 2, I examine these questions. In Part 3, I aim to replace the vocabulary of hustling with that of the conversation. — 1.) Word Association: What comes…
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The ‘great speedup’ reconsidered: Being at wits’ end and beyond
Abstract The following paper clocks in at around 2500 words. If you’d like to read it in its entirety, it might be easiest to click on the title of the post above. Here’s an abstract: Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffer, in the July/August issue of Mother Jones, write about the grave social impact of what they term “the great speedup”–essentially,…
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The end of the career: A long view
Abstract I argue that we may be witnessing not the stopping and stalling of some careers but the more far-reaching conclusion that the very idea of a career may be coming to an end. In what follows, I tease out the social implications of the end of the career and then provide some prima facie evidence in support of this…
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The Economist: ‘New middle classes rise up’
In “The New Middle Classes Rise Up” (September 3, 2011, The Economist), the editors state that emerging giants such as India, Brazil, and China are beginning to show signs of middle class unrest. A growing middle class has become more vociferous about making anti-corruption claims and demanding greater comforts. One expert quoted says that “the middle class…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 