Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 142

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Saturday Interview: Stuart Hall' by Zoe Williams at guardian.co.uk

• 'A Condition for Pilots: 'Existential' Conflict' by Farah Stockman at boston.com

• 'Sway: Wikileaks, Universities and Soft Power' by David Mathews at timeshighereducation.co.uk

• 'The Maps We Wandered into as Kids' by Victoria Johnson at theawl.com

Have a good weekend.

Photo credit: Zach Dischner

Constructing the Spirit of Cricket

I recently came across this film produced by the British Council in 1950 introducing cricket. I found the narrative fascinating, particularly the way that the rhythms, traditions, and totems of the game are presented as pastoral in origin. There is an emphasis on manners, leisure, and craft in the film. My argument then is that this film provides a performative of the spirit of cricket for an international audience.

Cricket became institutionalized as a national game during the Victorian era. Its development as a sport  was deeply embedded in the dramatic social changes brought about by industrialization, capitalism, and imperialism. From the start, cricket attempted to recall an era that had passed, never-mind if such an era had even ever existed in the form presented by its 19th century conservative proponents. Its mythology was pedagogical. It was geared towards the  transmission of proper social mores, etiquette, and deference to authority. More recent initiatives regarding the spirit of cricket, like that drafted by the MCC, have attempted to reinvigorate these disciplinary qualities that exist in excess of the formal laws of the game. But for me, what this film demonstrates is that the English cricket has always been locked in a process of becoming, performatively asserting itself to hide the absence of any true substantive spirit.

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 141

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Contributing to Public Goods: My 20 Rules for Refereeing' by Marc F. Bellemare at marcbellemare.com

• 'The Difference Between Online Knowledge and Truly Open Knowledge' by C.W. Anderson at theatlantic.com

• 'Obama Terror Drones: CIA Tactics in Pakistan Include Targeting Rescuers and Funerals' by Chris Woods and Christina Lamb at thebureauinvestigates.com

• 'Colbert v. The Court' by Dahlia Lithwick at slate.com

• 'When Art and Politics Collided in LA' by Jon Wiener at latimes.com

• 'The Liberal Arts as Guideposts in the 21st Century' by Nannerl O. Keohane at chronicle.com

Have a good weekend.

Photo credit: pcorreia

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 140

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries' by the Association of Research Libraries at www.arl.org

• '1066 and All That by Richard J. Evans at newstatesmen.com

• 'Critical Theory: Useful Distinction or Unconscious Smugness?' by PJ Ray at cyborgology

• 'The Secret to Going Viral: It's All About Culture' by Jared Keller at theatlantic.com

Peace.

Photo credit: BiblioArchives/LibraryArchives

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 139

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare' by Nick Turse at guernicamag.com

• 'Five Day Gratification' by Wright Thompson at cricinfo.com (on the rhythms of test cricket in a world where speed rules)

• 'Lazy Higher Ed Journalism' by Melonie Fullick at insidehighered.com

• 'Models of Representation in Carl Schmitt' by Charles Kollmer at telospress.com

• 'The Politics of the Sweater Vest' by Vanessa Friedman at ft.com

• 'Special Forces Get Social in New Psychological Operation Plan' by Noel Shachtman at dangerroom

Enjoy!

Photo credt: mtkopone

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

9-11 November, 2012

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Geneva, New York, 14456, USA

What do zombies have to do with world politics? How might the Twilight sagas inform and illuminate our way of understanding world politics and changes in the global political economy? In what ways do videogames, the sales of which now exceed those of music CDs and DVDS combined, shape the identities and political understandings of frequent players? Is visual media destined to replace print as the primary source of news and entertainment in advanced industrial societies and how might this affect the construction of meaning of world affairs? As a means of communication readily available to an ever-expanding number of individuals and groups, how might the internet offer paths of resistance to corporate and Western news and entertainment hegemony? How can tango dancing make the world a more peaceful place?

This conference explores the multiple ways of investigating the intersections of world politics and the production, circulation, content, and consumption of various popular cultural forms. Engaging a range of disciplines and practices in the social sciences, humanities and the arts, the conference encourages participants to question what terms such as ‘global,’ ‘popular,’ and ‘culture’ mean both in isolation and when used in conjunction. It asks in what ways and with what effects popular culture has become a series of sites at which political meaning is made, where political contestation takes place, and where political orthodoxy is reproduced and challenged. The conference provides a highly-focused and interdisciplinary environment in which the increasing numbers of scholars that are engaging in culture-related research can present their work and participate in the kind of extended discussion that larger conferences do not permit. The conference aims to provide an intimate forum at which debates about interdisciplinary methods and theoretical approaches can be developed to facilitate debate across disciplines that share interests in world politics and culture. We welcome proposals for performances, screenings, panels, or individual papers, on any aspect of world politics and popular culture.

Building on the preceding four PCWP conferences, version 5.0 will be held on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a small liberal arts institution located in the beautiful Finger Lakes (wine-making) region of western New York state.

Inquiries should be sent to PCWP@hws.edu
The deadline for proposals is 15 July 2012

Many thanks to Kevin Dunn who has graciously agreed to host and organize this year's event!

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 137

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising' by the Directorate for Employment, Labour, and Social Affairs at oecd.org

• 'How Companies Avoid Tax--A Quick Summary in 8,000 Words'  by Richard Murphy at www.taxresearch.org

• 'Behind the Rise of the Great Powers' by Liu Xiaobo (translated by Josephine Chiu-Duke) at guernicamag.com

• 'Vestige(s) of Empire' by James Biber at designobserver.com

• 'Do "Prestigious" Journals Make Academics Lazy? An Unlikely Parallel with the Art World' by Mark Carrigan at markcarrigan.net

• 'Universities Gone Wild: Big Money, Big Sports, and Scandalous Abuse at Penn State' by  Henry Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux at truth-out.org

Have a good weekend.

Photo credit: Abhi Shinde

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 136

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Social Utility of Art and Scholarship' by Clare O'Farrell at refractedinput

• 'Top 50 Multimedia Packages of 2011' by Tracy Boyer Clark at innovativeinteractivity.com

• 'What It Takes to Open a Bar in Baghdad' by Joshuah Bearman at atlantic.com (apparantly being a mercenary is a good start...)

• 'Stealth Tech, Facebook Revolutions, Shadow Wars: The Most Dangerous Year Ever' by Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman at dangerroom

• 'Photographs of the Year 2011' by Homa Khaleeli, Rob Fearn, Amy Fleming, Sarah Phillips, and Paula Cocozza at guardian.co.uk

• 'The Struggle for the Open Web: Putting "Piracy" In Perspective' by David Campbell at david-campbell.org

• 'I'll Tell You Why Movie Revenue is Dropping' by Roger Ebert at rogerebert.com (hint, it's not piracy...)

Happy New Year!

Photo credit: feileacan

Weekend Reading v. 135

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Airforce Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress' by Elisabeth Bumiller at nytimes.com

• 'Against All Odds: How "Crazy" Kim Jung Il Outfoxed the World' by Howard W. French at atlantic.com

• 'Social Media in the 16th Century: How Luther Went Viral' at economist.com

• 'Smoke Screen' by Charles C. Mann at vanityfair.com

Peace on earth and goodwill to all humans.

 Photo credit: Jennifer Boyer

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 134

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped to Make the US Into A Selfish, Greedy Nation' by Bruce E. Levine at alternet.org (Rand deserves to be pilloried for her philosophy and writing but would the same elements of this particular critique be deployed if she had been a man?)

• 'If I Were the Middle Class White Guy Gene Marks' by Kelly Virella at dominionofnewyork.com

• 'Saul Leiter and the Typographic Fragment' by Rick Poynor at designobserver.com

• 'Raising the Pension Age Will Be a Public Health Disaster' by Steve Griffiths at leftfootforward.org

Peace.

Photo credit: utahwildflowers