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Monthly Archives: October 2006

Backhanded Compliments

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Of the three patriarchs of sociology (viz., Marx, Weber and Durkheim), it is generally recognized that Marx was both the most humorous and most vicious. While Durkheim reviewed nearly a thousand books in his day (including a famously thorough trashing of a book by Marianne Weber, the wife of Max), his tongue isn’t quite as [...]

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Musical Friday

Friday, October 27, 2006

“Post-Structuralism” and “Post-Rock” Edition
Both quite stupid names thus suggesting that they belong together, especially when one considers that “post-rock” superstars Windsor for the Derby and Tarentel both have released albums featuring names eerily similar to “post-structuralism” classics, Difference and Repetiton and The Order of Things respectively. I’d note, however, that beyond the titles of the [...]

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Expectations

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Yesterday, in this comment, in reference to my lack of desire to publish for fear of imposing second-rate scholarship on the rest of the world in a culture which demands constant publication, I suggested that my lack of desire could be reasonably accounted for on relatively reasonable grounds: graduate students aren’t paid to publish research. [...]

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Buddhism and …

Monday, October 23, 2006

Kenneth Rufo, a co-collaborator at Long Sunday, has recently discovered buddhism. (Or re-discovered – either way, I won’t claim to know and I wouldn’t ask.) Kenneth has also been committed to a renewal of the “progressive” wing of the American Democratic Party. (Something, I assume, but, once again, I don’t know, comparable to our own [...]

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Regarding American Sociology

Monday, October 23, 2006

Despite calling myself a “sociologist” in the sense that “I could very well be wrong: I’m not a philosopher, after all, but a sociologist” or somesuch, I came to sociology rather late (my honours year was the first sociology class I took – “Contemporary Sociological Theory” – taught by a historical sociologist/post-structuralist) and didn’t “become” [...]

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Musical Friday

Friday, October 20, 2006

This week I want to take a moment to move away from rock-based pop music and move into hip hop based pop music, especially that which is found in the top forty. I think it is more than fair to say that the last decent top forty song that was rock-based was Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” [...]

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An Unfair Review

Friday, October 20, 2006

The message I got from David Held’s lecture tonight was something akin to this: there are liberals and there are social democrats. Liberals are clearly bad and no different than neo-cons. Social democrats believe in something like capitalistic socialism. What this means is that we’ll have really good, really fair markets, but we’ll also have [...]

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Annual Lectures

Thursday, October 19, 2006

I would like to put a particular practice to a stop: all star academics (“all star” and “academics” shall be defined at the discretion of the reader) who accept invitations by various universities to give an “annual lecture” of some sort and proceed to read a lecture they’ve given a dozen times or a paper [...]

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From an anthropological perspective…

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The best thing about aging faculty is that not only do they eventually retire, hence opening up the possibility of up to three more tenure-track jobs (depending upon salary levels and faculty politics insofar as the distribution of salaries/positions is concerned), but also they often clean out their offices as that day approaches and, consequently, [...]

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Frantz Fanon Documentary

Monday, October 16, 2006

Monday, October 23 and Monday, October 30
Ideas on CBC Radio 1, 9:05PM
THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH
His writing helped shape the thinking of a generation of revolutionaries, agitators and anti-colonialists throughout Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. His book, The Wretched of the Earth, became a handbook for Black Power groups and a Bible for [...]

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