Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 866 )

• Guest Post by Izabela Wagner on Zygmunt Bauman

  

  Izabela Wagner, author of Bauman: A Biography, is Professor of Sociology at Collegium Civitas (Poland) and fellow at Institute Convergence Migration (Paris).... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2021 SOCIETY

• Kołakowski on Stalinism and Reform

  

  A recent post featured the evolution of the thought of Zygmunt Bauman. There I mentioned a comparison with his Warsaw contemporary, Leszek Kołakowski, and... Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2021 SOCIETY

• How Bauman Became Bauman

  

  Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was an influential voice in the world of sociological theorizing. In the second part of his career -- following his expulsion as a... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2021 SOCIETY

• Did the Iliad Have an Author?

  

  Since this is probably the best known text from the ancient Greek world, one might find the question a puzzling one: of course the Iliad had an author; it was... Read more

  Posted on 05 July 2021 SOCIETY

• Readers of Understanding Society Using the Email Feed ...

  Greetings, all,Google has informed all publishers on Blogspot (the host site for Understanding Society) that it will no longer be supporting the Feedburner emai... Read more

  Posted on 30 June 2021 SOCIETY

• Decision-making for Big Physics

  

  Big science is largely dominant in many areas of science -- for example, high-energy physics, medical research, the human genome project, and pandemic research. Read more

  Posted on 30 June 2021 SOCIETY

• The Holocaust "comparability" Debate

  

  The question of how to understand the Holocaust has troubled historians since the first knowledge of the war of extermination against the Jews of Europe became... Read more

  Posted on 29 June 2021 SOCIETY

• Experiencing War, Genocide, and Totalitarianism (Tony Judt)

  

  photo: Manès SperberTony Judt's historical writings about the twentieth century are brilliant, and highly relevant to the research I'm pursuing on the evils of... Read more

  Posted on 26 June 2021 SOCIETY

• Multinational Corporate Accountability and Control During the Nazi Period

  

  In a previous post I considered the question of the culpability of multinational corporations with affiliates in wartime Nazi Germany (link). Read more

  Posted on 05 June 2021 SOCIETY

• Explaining GOP Behavior

  

  If only Chuck Tilly were still with us ... I'd give a lot to hear his interpretation of the behavior of GOP officials throughout large swaths of the country,... Read more

  Posted on 03 June 2021 SOCIETY

• Forced Labor and Multinational Corporations

  

  What role did American multinational auto companies play in the rearmament of Germany during the early period of Nazi rule? And to what extent did these... Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2021 SOCIETY

• Five Easy Pieces (for the Social Sciences)

  

  Social scientists are generally interested in "explaining" social outcomes: why did such-and-so take place as it did? Why did the Indochina War occur, and why... Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2021 SOCIETY

• The Great Threat to Democracy

  

  Democracies have fallen to strongmen, tyrants-in-waiting, bullies, thugs, spewers-of-bombast. But these powerful personalities are not the greatest threat to... Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2021 SOCIETY

• Corporations and the Nazi Regime

  

  It is apparent, 90 years after the beginnings of the Nazi period, that large corporations played an important and lamentable role in Nazi power and... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2021 SOCIETY

• Does Seneca Have a System of Philosophy?

  

  Seneca's epistles to Lucilius in Letters from a Stoic represent a huge contribution to Stoic philosophy, filled with examples and aphorisms that illuminate... Read more

  Posted on 08 May 2021 SOCIETY

• Avineri on Marx as Social Democrat

  

  Shlomo Avineri is one of the interpreters of Marx's thought for whom I have had a great deal of respect since the publication of Social and Political Thought... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2021 SOCIETY

• A Brief Senecian Reflection the Humble Kidney Stone

  

  A kidney stone is an affliction. It is a source of pain, it makes sleep impossible, it is a misery that makes thought about anything else impossible. And its... Read more

  Posted on 30 April 2021 SOCIETY

• Buffy the Existentialist Vampire Slayer

  

  Here is a hard question. Can the creators of television shows and other kinds of pop culture be understood sometimes to pose fundamental and important... Read more

  Posted on 21 April 2021 SOCIETY

• Technology and Culture in Antiquity

  

  image: survey instruments, 1728The history of technology was sometimes approached as a self-contained field of study. A more fruitful approach in the past thirt... Read more

  Posted on 20 April 2021 SOCIETY

• Technology in the Ancient World: Time

  

  We don't think of the ancient world as being one that was rich in technological innovation or progress. And yet in a number of areas, there were very significan... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2021 SOCIETY