France is notorious these days for two things – getting up the nose of the Americans (from French fries to ‘freedom’ fries) and banning the veil in schools. The second of these is a ‘total social fact’, something that taps into the deepest and most contradictory currents of modern French… Read more »
The year I got my doctorate, in 1969, there were 23 lecturing jobs I could have applied for in Britain; and at least one had no applicants. The fifteen new universities that had just been created were still recruiting and their graduate students had not yet reached the market. The… Read more »
Theory Culture and Society, PUBLICity I read about A Foreign Sound at the same time in Le Monde (1) and the New York Times (2). The CD is Caetano Veloso’s homage to the formative influence on him of American popular music (3). The 23 tracks, sung in English, are mostly… Read more »
How can an economic democracy be built from the bottom up? One method is exchange circuits using community currencies of which the most widespread form is called Local Exchange Trading System (LETS). The idea of LETS is to foster exchange within local communities. Conventional money is issued by an authority… Read more »
…be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air. — The Tempest IV: I, 147 There is a shop near our local park that sells little girls’ ballet dresses. The yellowing models… Read more »