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Category Archives: Dissertation

A Serious Question

Friday, July 15, 2011

Why do critical realists insist on asserting a dogmatic humanism? Consider Margaret Archer in her “Preface” to Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences: “First and last, relational sociologists and critical realists care deeply about the human capacity for fulfillment and the human liability to multifarious forms of suffering. As it [...]

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Cataloging Errors

Monday, February 21, 2011

I’ve been collecting materials to complete that final section on bioethics. Among the items on my readings is Peter Singer “The Concept of Moral Standing” in Ethics in Hard Times, edited by Arthur L. Caplan and Daniel Callahan (New York: Plenum Press, 1981). According the Catalogue at Carleton, the library did not have the volume in [...]

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Bioethics and Biopolitics

Saturday, February 19, 2011

I’m putting together the final sections on my dissertation. The main chapters dealt with seventeenth century theorists on the distinction between the human and animal and how this relates to their general theoretical apparatus. The final chapter, on the advice on my supervisor, is to make those chapters relevant to contemporary debates. The advice seems [...]

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The Concepts of “Human” and “Animal”

Friday, January 29, 2010

I am working on the last parts of my dissertation and have been wondering about the concepts of human and animal. It is commonly observed in animal studies that the concept of human is constituted through the expulsion of the animal. That is, humans are humans because they are not animals. Obviously, it is recognized [...]

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Nearing the End

Thursday, August 6, 2009

I am slowly nearing the end of my dissertation. I need to complete one last substantive chapter (on Mandeville) and then work on the general framing of the dissertation — I should also come up with a suitable title at some point. In the absence of some sort of framing, the dissertation, as it stands, [...]

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Appropriation; Private; Property

Monday, January 12, 2009

Recently written as an aside in my chapter on Locke (also unedited): Note: Appropriate, Private Property The “means to appropriate” the common and thus transform it into private property is absolutely essential to Locke’s political theory and has significant consequences for the theory of political or civil society including the right of resistance to tyranny [...]

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More on my dissertation

Friday, September 26, 2008

Sometimes I feel what I’ve written is a load of terrible, superficial crap. Other times I feel that I’ve written something that will at least hold the attention of the less than ten people who will read the whole dissertation – and, better, that they might find something interesting or useful in it. I am [...]

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On writing dissertations

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A common problem many doctoral candidates face when writing their dissertation is knowing when to stop reading. Hence, reading replaces writing and all that accumulates are piles of half-read books and stacks of misconceived notes. Not being much of a notetaker myself, I tend to avoid, at least, the stacks of notes. (Although I have [...]

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Correspondence

Sunday, August 24, 2008

In a paper I was reading last night, the author made reference to the article forming the basis for a much longer book-length work. The essay appeared in 1990. Eighteen years later, the book has not yet appeared. I decided to email the author and enquire about the work – did it stall? is it [...]

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Political Animals: Bees

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The work known as Feminine Monarchie was first published in 1609 by Charles Butler went through a number of editions during the course of the seventeenth century in England. The original 1609 edition was entitled The Feminine Monarchie or a Treatise Concerning Bees, and the Due Ordering of Them: Wherein the Truth, Found Out by [...]

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