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The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering.' So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Milan Kundera, Ignorance

#memory #nostalgia #Milan Kundera #vocabulary #meaning #suffering #yearning #the human condition #quotations #literature

Lucille A. Jewel, I Can Has Lawyer?1: The Conflict between the Participatory Culture of the Internet and the Legal Profession, 33 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 341 (2010)

I. Introduction

The Internet allows citizens to comment on public affairs with an amplified and unfiltered voice, creating an open, community-based culture where robust debate flourishes. Users now have the autonomy to produce cultural meanings outside of traditional institutions such as large-scale media outlets and government entities. This new Internet-based culture of sharing and commenting has been labeled "participatory culture."2 However, some of the ideals and practices of participatory culture clash with the traditional legal culture as it exists in the United States. Specifically, professional conflicts are emerging with respect to blogs and emails where lawyers air caustic, uncensored, and highly critical views of the legal profession and the judiciary. Although these online narratives often reflect a view that the structure of the legal system is badly broken, they may also run afoul of professional norms or ethical rules that prohibit attorneys from impugning the integrity of the legal system. This Article's thesis is that as the democratic ideals inherent in participatory culture become more deeply embedded in our society, the legal profession should also evolve and embrace a more pluralistic and unconstrained approach toward professionalism.

As I have written previously, the legal culture within the United States is a straight-laced culture, highly dependent on formalism and hierarchy.' Cultural meanings, such as what it means to be a lawyer and the correct legal analysis that flows from a case, are tightly controlled by few-law professors,' judges,' and institutions, such as the American Bar Association ("ABA").' With respect to commonly accepted narratives for the legal profession and proper legal analysis in the classroom or courtroom, an analogy can be made to the "one-to-many" model of mass media communication, where a few large entities controlled most of the information.! Now, technology has given everyone the ability to comment and participate in the creation of cultural meanings. The Internet also enables users to comment and critique with real-time immediacy, in contrast to the slower pace by which meaning was created in the older mass media system." Now that we are living in a "many-to-many" media environment, a culture clash is emerging within the legal profession where professional rules and norms have heretofore enforced a culture of restraint.

This cultural conflict can be seen in electronic narratives that go "viral,"9 where lawyers comment on the lack of humanism within big law firm firing practices, expose the alienating work environments experienced by low-level contract attorneys, or criticize judges who show hostility toward criminal defense attorneys. Within these electronic forums, lawyers regularly speak out against the characters (such as the law school administrators, judges, and elite attorneys) who they perceive to wield arbitrary power over them. Often using a sarcastic and caustic tone, these narratives portray the practice of law as a dark, lonely, and alienating experience.

These narratives question commonly held perceptions of what it means to be a lawyer and disclose experiences at odds with traditional understandings of a lawyer's professional identity. From a critical standpoint, they portray a broken legal profession, implicitly arguing that the liberal humanism the profession supposedly embodies does not apply to all lawyers. These stories are, in effect, structural critiques of the profession. Penned by the outliers of the legal profession, they provide a culturally valuable perspective on what it means to be an American lawyer in the twenty-first century.

Nonetheless, such critical postings conflict with the notion that attorneys should not criticize the integrity of the legal profession or the judiciary."o However, because they afford a valuable critique of the profession, professional norms and ethical rules should not operate to shut out these stories. It is a positive development that technology gives ordinary attorneys the power to inform the culture of the profession, as opposed to previous models where only elite and powerful practitioners were given a voice.11

Part II of this Article describes the characteristics of participatory culture relevant to the legal profession. Part III explores the emerging format of the online lawyer narrative, and Part IV discusses its cultural value. Part V analyzes the professionalism issues raised by these new narratives.

The term "professional" represents a higher, normative concept that looks at what attorneys should do as opposed to what they must do, which is the province of the ethics rules. See Benjamin H. Barton, The ABA, The Rules, and Professionalism: The Mechanics of Self-Defeat and a Call for a Return to the Ethical, Moral, and Practical Approaches of the Canons, 83 N.C. L. REV. 411, 440-41 (2005) (discussing how "ethics" has become synonymous with the minimum rules governing attorney conduct whereas "professionalism" embodies a more normative standard as to what lawyers "should" do); Jeffrey A. Maine, Importance of Ethics and Morality in Today's Legal World, 29 STETSON L. REV. 1073, 1077-78 (2000) (explaining that disciplinary rules such as the Model Rules of Professional Conduct contain the minimum ethical standards whereas true professionalism requires one to go beyond the bounds of the disciplinary rules). As the example of Sean Conway shows, Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.2(a) (as adopted in most states, including Florida) provides a strong basis for imposing attorney discipline for negative stories about judges. A few states have professional rules that support discipline for more general criticism of the profession. In Illinois, for instance, attorneys may be disciplined for conduct that brings "the courts or the legal profession into disrepute." See, e.g., ILL. SUP. CT. R. 770. Additional authority for disciplining attorneys for general critiques of the legal system can be found in the preamble to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which exhorts lawyers to "respect the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers, and public officials." See Steven Wisotsky, Incivility and Unprofessionalismon Appeal: Impugning the Integrity of Judges, 7 J. APP. PRAC. & PROCESS 303, 309, n.34 (2005) (citing 5-H Corp. v. Padovano, 708 So. 2d 244, 245-46, 248 (Fla. 1997)). See also, Preamble, 1 6, MODEL RULES OF PROF'L CONDUCT (2002) ("A lawyer should further the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority."). Outside the context of criticizing judges or prejudicing an ongoing trial, the case law does not generally support the idea of imposing attorney discipline for broad- based critiques of the legal system. Such criticism would, however, violate the implicit professional norms that underlie the ethics rules. See infra notes 152-54 and accompanying text.

#law #practice of law #legal profession #culture #work culture #internet #public affairs #The Way We Live Now #communication #free speech #media #participatory culture #freedom #narrative #democratic ideals #ABA #american bar association #critique

Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Can They Do That? Legal Ethics in Popular Culture: Of Characters and Acts, 48 UCLA L Rev 1305 (2001)

This Essay describes the depiction of modern lawyers' professional ethics in literature, films, and television, and distinguishes between personal and professional character and specific acts. Depictions of lawyers in modern popular culture are more complex and nuanced than older treatments and allow law students, lawyers, and legal academics an opportunity to examine both ethical rule violations and "micro" behavioral choices, as well as character and more "macro" professional career choices and philosophies in a variety of contexts and serialized plot, treatments. Treatments of professional ethics in more recent popular culture are also contrasted to more literary examinations of both lawyers' and other professionals' moral choices. Whether modern popular depictions of lawyers reveal more villains than heroes remains an interesting, if unanswerable question. Lawyers are more diverse in their demography and work settings, and the complexity of the sociology of ethical choices is now more often depicted than it was in the "golden age" of popular lawyer heroes.

It is possible to construct a temporal template of ethical issues depicted in the popular media from the beginning of the lawyer-client relationship to the end of an appeal or transaction (or to a murder for those relationships that end really badly). Russell Banks's The Sweet Hereafter114 tells the fictionalized story of an actual bus accident that killed a number of children and had a great impact on many lives. The story is told from the point of view of many different participants in the story, but from Mitchell Stephen, Esq., we learn how clients are involuntarily solicited, because lawyers are angry and are able to harness their anger to compensate other people. For Mitchell Stephens, "[there are no accidents115-someone is always responsible for things that go wrong, and it is the plaintiffs lawyer's job to find someone (with deep pockets) to blame and to pay up so the injured can be compensated. This is class justice and the lawyer must orchestrate it: "I wanted a mean lean team, a troop of vengeful parents willing to go the route with me and not come home without some serious trophies on our spears.116 As Stephens describes himself, he lives for these "disaster negligence suits .... Nothing else provides me with the rush that I get from cases like this .... It's almost like a drug. It's probably close to what professional soldiers feel, or bullfighters.117 Stephens tells us how he ropes in mourning parents and what he does when one of them, Billy Ansel (who has lost two children), resists him, and how he lies to make his case. We also learn how Stephens appears to his clients (from their point of view), as one of the injured children, Nichole Burnell, takes his measure when she is interviewed and prepped for a deposition (which she later deliberately ruins by telling her own truth and seeking justice against another wrongdoer, her own abusive father, rather than against any of the actors in the accident). Although Nichole likes Mr. Stephens, he makes her feel greedy and dishonest by preparing for a deposition to get the money her parents want from her injury. Nichole overhears a conversation Billy Ansel has with her father about how the lawyers are all suing each other because some plaintiffs have signed up with more than one lawyer, and the reader feels the pain of grieving parents trying to make sense of what has happened and what could happen to them, while the lawyers fight to profit from their misery."'

See, e.g., PAUL M. BARRETT, THE GOOD BLACK: A TRUE STORY OF RACE IN AMERICA (1999); DAVID HEILBRONER, ROUGH JUSTICE; DAYS AND NIGHTS OF A YOUNG D.A. (1990); WILLIAM R. KEATES, PROCEED WITH CAUTION: A DIARY OF A FIRST YEAR AT ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST PRESTIGIOUS LAW FIRMS (1997); CAMERON STRACHER, DOUBLE BILLING (1998); see also LINCOLN CAPLAN, SKADDEN: POWER, MONEY, AND THE RISE OF A LEGAL EMPIRE (1993) (depicting a biography of a law firm); EDGAR JONES, MR. ARBITRATOR (2000) (describing a fictional chronicle of the author's real-life arbitration experience, displaying decision making in real cases, law school cases and family issues). Professor Ted Jones, now retired from UCLA School of Law, taught labor and arbitration law from 1951-1991 and made his own contributions to law and popular culture by appearing as the judge in several ABC fictionalized court programs (Accused (ABC television broadcast, 1958-1959); Day in Court (ABC television broad- cast, 1958-1965); Traffic Court (ABC television broadcast, 1958-1959)), all of which predated People's Court (nationally syndicated television broadcast, 1981-1993) and the new "reality television." Unlike the angrier "bill and tell" stories of the younger generation, Professor Jones seeks to model ethical behavior and to teach love of the law, the development of personal integrity, and self-discipline. Mr. Arbitrator reminds us of the now republished first entry into this genre, ARTHUR TRAIN, YANKEE LAWYER: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF EPHRAIM TUTT (1999), a fictionalized series of stories based on Train's own experience, which his son describes as that of a "foxy, kindly, courtly, old-fashioned lawyer who treasures justice for the unfortunate above the letter of the law." John Train, Introduction to the Common Reader, in TRAIN, supra, at x; see also Francis M. Nevins, Mr. Tutt's Jurisprudential Journey: The Stories of Arthur Train, 19 LEGAL STUD. F. 57 (1995); Philip H. DeTurk, The Tutt Stories:A Review, WASH. ST. B. NEWS, Oct. 1991, at 19.

Alexandre Calame, The Winter (1851)

#images #paintings #art #1850s #alexandre calame

Markus M. Mobius & Tanya S. Rosenblat, Why Beauty Matters, 96 Amer Econ Rev 222 (2006)

Abstract

We decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where ‘employers’ pay wages to ‘workers’ who perform a maze-solving task. This task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness. We find a sizable beauty premium but no evidence for direct taste-based discrimination. Instead, we can identify three indirect transmission channels. (1) Physically-attractive workers are more confident which helps them to obtain higher wages. This effect explains about 20 percent of the beauty premium. (2) Physically-attractive workers are (wrongly) considered more able by employers. This direct stereotype effect is responsible for about 30 percent of the premium. (3) Physically-attractive workers have certain skills (such as communication and social skills) which raise their wages when they interact verbally with employers. This indirect stereotype effect contributes to the remaining 50 percent of the beauty premium.

#beauty #aesthetics #appearances #personal appearance #beauty premium #privilege #confidence #economic experiments #labor markets #social skills #social capital #discrimination #reverse-discrimination #employment discrimination

mmmlib

Sinbad, lost in the desert, discovers the five platonic solids. Drawing by Claude Bragdon, around 1915.

#images #1910s #sinbad #literature #platonic solids #science #matter

Görkem Akgöz et al., Back to the factory: the continuing salience of industrial workplace history, 61 Labor Hist 1 (2020)

Abstract

Factories remain significant sites of employment, crucial to capitalism. In the twentieth century, scholars registered achievements in documenting their history, but since the late 1980s, and for a generation, the field lost impetus within labour history although insights continued to accumulate through work in adjacent disciplines. The factory has not featured on the agenda of ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ labour history, but we suggest that it can and should contribute to that broader global project, reinvigorating labour history, not least by contributing a dimension close to workers’ everyday experience.

‘Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face “No admittance except on business.” Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.’ -Karl Marx. Capital (1978, p.167).

Critiques of the factory history tradition grew in number and force. By the end of the 1980s, in the British context, Jonathan Zeitlin scorned the focus on workers’ self-activity as ‘rank-and-filism.’ His critique of the departure from the earlier institutional focus in labour history reflected the increasing attention given to the study of workers in the workplace and community (1987, 1989). Richard Price simultaneously defended (industrial) workplace analysis. He defined the factory as the site ‘where the labour process is actualized and where the theory and practice of industrial relations strategies meet, founder, are successful or modified.’ Only at this level could the historian ‘capture at an intimate level one of the most important social relationships in society – that between worker and employer’ (Price, 1989, p.64). In hindsight, and despite Price’s rearguard action, this debate may be read as heralding the beginning of the industrial workplace’s decline in labour historiography. Although sporadic interventions asserted the workplace’s significance in the context of the disaggregation and decentering of workers’ struggles (Wells, 1997), the study of shop floor industrial relations and its history subsequently diminished. This mirrored the contemporary decline in the incidence of strikes, lockouts and shop floor militancy. It may also have reflected critiques of ‘essentialised’ and teleological accounts of working-class agency associated with ‘state socialist’ regimes. In the 1990s, trend-setters in US and UK history departments started to consider any focus on class and industrial workers to be ‘reductionist’ and to be acting to obscure questions of culture, race and gender (Pearson, 2010). Labour historians who studied the factory fell out of fashion. Factory workers’ waning public profile opened a period in which labour historians threw the baby out with the bathwater. The steady fragmentation of work and workplaces induced historians to study previously neglected categories of workers, from bricklayers to sailors, and it became common to see edited labour history volumes omitting factory workers altogether. Labour history came to incorporate the stories of Canadian strippers, Indian street vendors and Irish nuns.

Thus, labour history in the past generation has generated an implicit and sometimes explicit critique of previous conceptual, linguistic and explanatory models (De Vito, 2012; Lucassen, 2006; Van der Linden, 2008; Van der Linden & Lucassen, 1999). Labour historians increasingly moved away from apparently reducing workers’ experiences to work. The widening of labour history’s perspectives renewed and centred previous contact with the history of everyday life, of communities, of urban space and gender. Theoretical interventions such as post-structuralism and feminist theory have received a good deal of attention from historians, and although they often leaned away from these, such theoretical trends meant that the classic categories of labour history could not be deployed uncritically. These developments permitted the centring of a broader approach to the history of labour, but simultaneously consigned factory history to obsolescence. As labour history transcended the confines of mature industrialised societies, it sought to become more ‘global’ and cross-fertilized with other sub-fields ranging from women’s history to cultural anthropology and the history of technology. It also became affected by a high degree of fragmentation (Van der Linden & Lucassen, 1999, p.5). The distance between the socio-political problems of the 1980s and the politics of historiography was a relatively short one. The polemics of the former spilled over to the latter. Some of social history’s more materialist standpoints rooted in the explanatory categories of Marxist history came under severe scrutiny (Gray, 1986, p. 363). Following the alleged shift to the post-industrial economy in the West and the emergence of epistemological paradigms which sought to displace grand narratives such as Marxism, the factory and industrial work ceased to impress historians with its potential to understand capitalism. Prior to this shift, however, twentieth century factory history had registered real achievements and laid some foundations for further developments. First, it theorised the workplace in historical studies. Second, it created an empirical base. In symbiosis with industrial sociology and industrial relations, the western tradition generated detailed micro-histories of shop floor accommodation and resistance. These achievements encouraged historians to look outside the factory, more fully to understand factory workers’ identities. The need is for extended work in transnational history. In the UK, most recent publications in the trade union field have been judged insular and published work has appeared to ‘incompletely reflect recent theorizing about transnational history’ (McIlroy & Croucher, 2013). We have made a case for more completely realising the project through a renewed emphasis on the factory.

#global labor #labor #labor history #history #factory #factory history #industrialization #post-industrialization #working-class history

Peter Bain & Phil Taylor, Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre, 15 New Technology Work & Employment 2 (2002)

This article presents a thoroughgoing critique of Fernie and Metcalf’s perspective, that the call centre is characterised by the operation of an ‘electronic panopticon’ in which supervisory power has been ‘rendered perfect’. Drawing on evidence from a telecommunications call centre the authors analyse the significance of emerging forms of employee resistance.

#labor #employment #call centers #The Way We Live Now #telecommunications #michel foucault #panopticon #technology #supervision #electronic panopticon #employee resistance #emerging industry #carceral state #jeremy bentham #2000s

Lou Reed - Sweet Jane (from Rock n Roll Animal)

#music #greats #audio #lou reed #1970s

The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful. The Greeks engendered the chimera, a monster with heads of the lion, the dragon and the goat; the theologians of the second century, the Trinity, in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are inextricably tied; the Chinese zoologists, the ti-yiang, a vermilion supernatural bird, endowed with six feet and four wings, but without a face or eyes; the geometers of the nineteenth century, the hypercube, a figure with four dimensions, which encloses an infinite number of cubes and has as its faces eight cubes and twenty-four squares. Hollywood has just enriched this vain museum of horrors: by means of an artistic malignity called dubbing, it proposes monsters that combine the illustrious features of Greta Garbo with the voice of Aldonza Lorenzo.

Jorge Luis Borges, "On Dubbing" ["Sobre el doblaje"]

#Jorge Luis Borges #literature #quotations #art #the infinite #representation #media

Gijsbert Oonk, Sport and nationality: towards thick and thin forms of citizenship, National Identities 1 (Epub ahead of print, 2020)

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between national belonging, acquiring citizenship, and migration. Taking high profile examples from international sports events, it seeks to unveil the complexities behind the question: who may represent the nation? The historical models of jus sanguine (blood ties) and jus soli (territorial birthright) are well-known markers and symbols of citizenship and nationality. The study proposes an ideal-type model of thick, thin, and in-between forms of citizenship. This model clarifies and provides direction to the empirical understanding of ‘citizenship as claims-making’, as recently suggested by Bloemraad [(2018). Theorising the power of citizenship as claims-making.

However, there are some counter-intuitive results of the distinction between jus sanguinis and jus soli: while a regime of pure jus sanguinis systematically excludes immigrants and their children, though the latter may have been born and raised in their parents’ new homeland, it includes the descendants of expatriates who might never have set foot in the homeland of their forebears. On the other hand, a regime of jus soli might attribute citizenship to children whose birth in the territory is accidental, while denying it to children who arrived in the country at a young age. It is important to understand that the current rules for acquiring citizenship at birth inevitably create multiple citizenships. Dual nationality merges at birth in two cases: first, in the gender-neutral system of jus sanguinis, where children of mixed parentage inherit both parents’ nationalities, and second, from a combination of jus soli and jus sanguinis. Multiple citizenships could only be avoided if all states adopted either pure jus soli or jus sanguinis from one parent’s side. However, gender discrimination in citizenship has been outlawed by norms of international and domestic law, and countries that apply jus soli within their territory mostly attribute citizenship jus sanguinis to children born to their citizens abroad. Given these facts, there is no possible rule that could be adopted by all states to avoid multiple forms of citizenship. In other words, through existing membership regimes, there is always scope for athletes and states to represent two or more states. Dutch national footballer Jonathan de Guzman, for example, could have played for Jamaica (maternal ancestry), the Philippines (paternal ancestry), Canada (where he was born), or the Netherlands (where he started his career and was eligible to play after naturalisation). His brother Julian represents Canada. In other words, as an extremely talented midfielder, he was able to negotiate between the Dutch and Canadian national football federations. His citizenship capital (a form of cultural capital) was such that he could claim to play for four different countries at the international level. By the same token, there were four national football federations that could compete for his talents. In this case, de Guzman chose to play for the Netherlands – most likely because his chances of winning a World Cup medal were highest there as the Dutch national football team was ranked higher than the other three options. In this respect, the agency of citizens and non-citizens takes centre stage rather than state policies (Bloemraad, 2018; Jansen et al., 2018). Thus, this study seeks to discuss ‘citizenship as membership through claims-making’ from an empirical perspective (Bloemraad, 2018). Bloemraad (2018) attempts to understand citizenship from a relational approach within the context of structured agency. She takes a bottom-up approach, emphasising the perspective of migrants in the context of ‘citizenship’s power as practice and status’ to elucidate, ‘how status, rights, participation and identity can at times be interwoven and reinforcing’ (Bloemraad, p. 4).

Research on sports labour migration began almost three decades ago with the pioneering work of Bale and Maguire (Bale, 1991; Bale & Maguire, 1994). In the development of a political economy of sport, labour migration and nationhood international sports migrants should be considered in the context of the realities of leaving native lands and adapting to foreign environments. Most cases examined came from countries in the Global North and South America. However, these were soon supplemented with cases of football players from Africa who went to Europe, and East African athletes who went to the Middle East (Bale, 2004; Carter, 2011; Darby, 2000, 2002, 2007; Lanfranchi & Taylor, 2001; Poli, 2006, 2010). Most of this research is primarily focused on male athletes. Agergaard and Engh have recently complemented existent literature with female migrant players, focusing on routes between African (Nigerian) and Scandinavian football clubs (Engh et al., 2017) as well as global perspectives (Agergaard & Tiesler, 2014). Recently, Besnier, Brownell, and Carter have taken up the challenge to write an anthropological perspective of sport, including issues of class, race, gender, and migration (2018). While these studies include questions of migration, cultural adaptation, legal process of visa, citizenship, and the political economy of globally skilled (athlete) labour, they scarcely focus on the extraordinary cases of migrant athletes who represent a country at the FIFA World Cup, or at the Olympics (Guschwan, 2014). The study argues that representing a country where you were not born often involves a different set of legal requirements (e.g. the acquisition of citizenship), adaptions (sometimes minimal), and national identification, whether imagined or not. For an excellent overview of the complexities of the nationality requirements of Olympic sports see the recent work of Wollmann (2016). She clearly shows that states, as well as international and national sport federations, may set different rules and regulations of eligibility. This study shows how athletes navigate within those institutions (Table 1).

#citizenship #migration #sport #nationality #identity #belonging #jus sanguine #jus soli #jus nexi #colonialism #post-colonialism #society #models of citizenship #olympic games #birthright citizenship #national identity #diaspora

Aharon Levy & Yossi Maaravi, The boomerang effect of psychological interventions, 13 Social Influence 39 (2017)

Abstract

Research has found that teaching people about psychological biases can help counteract biased behavior. On the other hand, due to the innate need for preservation of a positive self-image, it is likely that teaching people about biases they hold, may cause a boomerang effect in cases where being associated with a specific bias implies negative social connotations. In the three studies below we examine situations in which psychological bias implies negatively associated behavior, and show that teaching people about bias in those contexts can be counterproductive.

#bias #bias awareness #psychological bias #intervention #behavior #awareness #chauvinism #voting #bias reduction #self-image #attractiveness #impression

unchildhood

FRANZ KAFKA

Letters to Milena (1952);

original photos and edit

kafkaesque-world

“Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.” ― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

#images #literature #correspondence #franz kafka #abyss #love #interpersonal relationships #intense #greats #quotations #Milena Jesenská

David A. Banks, The attention economy of authentic cities: how cities behave like influencers, Euro Planning Stud (2021)

Abstract

Cities, like the people that live in them, are subject to the attention economy. Familiar social media platforms aggregate users’ tastes and reconstitute them as advertising and curated content. In this paper, I show that American cities are induced by state governments to adopt the attention-grabbing tactics of social media influencers. This is particularly evident in cultural planning as it relates to economic development. While this is a global phenomenon, I have chosen to focus on the Capital Region of New York State, a region approximately 240 kilometres north of New York City. I have chosen the Capital Region because New York's nine-year-old system of Regional Economic Development Councils highlights the competitive and often capricious environment that urbanists increasingly find themselves in. Through an analysis of planning documents, reported events and secondary sources I demonstrate how small to medium cities in Upstate New York are competing to be the purveyors of authentic urban living. I then discuss how authenticity and social media interact to create desires for consumption of identity performance. Finally, I compare the city authentic branding regime with the ‘Bilbao effect’ and show how the former can summon the effects of the latter without a ‘star’ architect.

#authenticity #influencers #urban planning #The Way We Live Now #rust belt #small cities #economic development #architecture #city planning #environments #albany #new york #capital region #trends

Mattias Nilsson Sjöberg, Reconstructing truth, deconstructing ADHD: Badiou, onto-epistemological violence and the diagnosis of ADHD, Crit Stud Edu 1 (2019)

Abstract

Psychiatric/neurodevelopmental diagnoses have expanded in number and scale with increased influence over matters of education and upbringing. One of the most common psychiatric diagnoses among children and adolescents is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The dominant perspective of ADHD is biomedical, where ADHD is defined as a neurogenetic dysfunction and disorder of the brain. Due to the absence of biological markers, the diagnosis is legitimized on the basis of a humanitarian principle: as an ideology. Through the diagnosis, which is construed in the article as a form of onto-epistemological violence, the unique subject is forced into an object and a second-class citizen who undergoes instrumental techniques of behaviour modification. The overall leitmotif of the article is to shift the focus from ‘chemical imbalances’ to ‘power imbalances’ to counteract reductionism, disempowerment and medical behaviourism. Theoretically, the article draws upon the French philosopher Alain Badiou’s ontological examination of being qua being, wherein the aim is to critically examine the onto-epistemological violence following the diagnosis of ADHD and to seek out a less violent pedagogy.

#adhd #psychiatry #critical pedagogy #philosophy of education #ethics #onto-epistemology #powerful #psychiatrization #violence #critique #alain badiou #The Other #paradigms #diagnosis #sociology of psychiatry #chemical imbalance theory

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

#soren kierkegaard #philosophy #existentialism #alienation #greats #loneliness #paradox #quotations

Taryn Bell & Penny Spikins, The object of my affection: attachment security and material culture, 11 Time & Mind 23 (2018)

Abstract

Archaeological research into how objects affect us emotionally is still in its infancy, with our affiliative responses to objects – those related to socially close and harmonious relationships – being particularly understudied. Psychological research has however revealed that objects can have powerful effects on emotional wellbeing, acting as attachment figures which provide a sense of comfort and security in the absence of loved ones, and promoting the confidence to explore and develop positive relationships. Here we discuss the phenomenon of these attachment objects, drawing on recent survey research, and applying this concept to new interpretations of two particularly meaningful prehistoric artefacts – the Stonehenge pig ‘toy’ and the Hohle Fels ‘Venus’. We conclude that a better understanding of attachment objects will provide considerable insight into the emotional significance of particular cherished artefacts throughout time.

#attachment #archeology #emotional well-bring #security #prehistory #materiality #the human condition #anxiety #artifacts #art #attachment objects #paleolithic period #affiliative emotions #toys #venus #hohle fels #transitional objects #behavior #development

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