#affluence and exploitation critique

[zomb13s]

The Paradox of Entitlement: Luxurious Consumption and the False Merit of Hard Work

Introduction The modern world is characterized by a growing disparity between those with immense wealth and those struggling to survive. In many societies, the notion of “deserving” luxury and affluence has become an implicit cultural narrative. This essay critically examines the psychological and social implications of claiming entitlement to extravagant lifestyles based on the idea of “working…

[haggishlyhagging]

Farsighted thinkers have pointed out that the moral imperative of respect for life, formerly understood in quantitative terms, must now be understood in terms of the quality of life. This has obvious implications, such as the need for population control and for bringing a halt to the waste of resources and pollution of the environment. Such needs are not understood by the machismo mind. Marcuse uses the category of obscenity to describe the behavior of the "affluent monster." He points out that "this society is obscene in producing and indecently exposing a stifling abundance of wares while depriving its victims abroad of the necessities of life . . . in its prayers, in its ignorance, and in the wisdom of its kept intellectuals." Meanwhile, of course, the affluent society pretends to be improving the quality of life, disguising what is actually happening by its usual techniques, which I have called "reversal."

Marcuse observes that the Establishment abuses the term "obscenity" by applying it, not to expressions of its own immorality but to the behavior of another:

Obscene is not the picture of a naked woman who exposes her pubic hair but that of a fully clad general who exposes his medals rewarded in a war of aggression; obscene is not the ritual of the Hippies but the declaration of a high dignitary of the Church that war is necessary for peace.

Marcuse's perception is acute, and he rightly calls for "linguistic therapy" which would free words from almost total distortion of their meanings by "the Establishment." Yet I must point out that the therapy will never be radical enough if the basic obscenity is perceived as capitalism rather than sexism. The very word "obscene" itself, as used by "the Establishment," suggests the locus of the essential perversion and victimization. Marcuse's own insightful juxtaposition of the naked woman and the fully clad general reveals the basic reversal in phallic morality which is still observable in socialist as well as capitalist societies. Such social criticism does not go far enough. It employs revealing instances of the powerful elite's sexist behavioral, imaginative, and linguistic distortions while still perceiving these distortions' radical source in capitalism and their cure in socialism.

Another sentence from the same essay of Marcuse is symptomatic of this phenomenon of shortsightedness. He writes:

Thus we are faced with the contradiction that the liberalization of sexuality provided an instinctual basis for the repressive and aggressive power of the affluent society [emphasis mine].

It should be stressed and this is what feminism is doing—that the so-called liberalization of sexuality "provides an instinctual basis for the repressive and aggressive power" of the sexist society. For of course it is not a genuine liberation of sexuality that displaces the obscenity of generals and projects it upon naked women, and the essential disease is not affluence in itself. The lifting of taboos on genital sexuality does nothing to liberate from sex roles. Marcuse himself says that this relaxation binds "the 'free' individuals libidinally to the institutionalized fathers."

Such expressions of insight into the sexist nature of the oppressive society, strangely coupled with failure to direct the critique directly and essentially at sexual oppression, is characteristic not only of intellectuals such as Marcuse but also of more "popular" expressions of social criticism. Such films as The Godfather, The Ruling Class, and Deliverance can be seen as brilliant exposes of the social disease which is patriarchalism. One could almost believe that the writers and directors must be committed feminists. Yet the functioning of these productions, with their amazingly revelatory juxtapositions of sex and violence and their exploitation of phallic symbolism, has not been directed intentionally to the service of feminism. Perhaps one could call such "understanding" of sexual alienation "subintentional." Recognition of the real enemy's identity is so close to the surface of consciousness of the writers and directors of such productions that some feminists tend to find the experience of reading such books and watching such films almost unbearable. "They know not what they say," it would seem. Then it is clear that women will have to speak forth the identity of that which is destroying us all. The subintentional revelations of male critics indicate that some receptivity to this knowledge may be possible—that the capacity to hear is closer to consciousness than we would have expected. The time for us to speak is precisely now.

-Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation

[surnaal]

#Sénégal #Insécurité #Tabaski #Criminalité L'imminence des festivités de la Tabaski est assombrie par une détérioration manifeste de la sécurité sur plusieurs fronts. Une série d'événements tragiques endeuille la nation, à commencer par une augmentation alarmante des accidents de la circulation. Des collisions mortelles, survenues notamment dans la région de Louga et sur des axes nationaux majeurs, ont coûté la vie à plusieurs personnes et fait de nombreux blessés graves. Le drame touche toutes les couches de la société, comme en témoigne le décès d'une jeune étudiante dans un accident alors qu'elle rejoignait sa famille pour la célébration, transformant une perspective de retrouvailles joyeuses en une profonde affliction. Ces incidents répétés soulignent une vulnérabilité critique sur le réseau routier durant cette période de forte affluence. Parallèlement à cette hécatombe routière, une vague de criminalité et de banditisme déferle sur le territoire. Les zones rurales ne sont pas épargnées, avec des arrestations significatives de voleurs de bétail dans le centre du pays, illustrant la persistance de ce fléau économique et social pour les éleveurs. La violence de ces actes atteint des niveaux particulièrement inquiétants, comme l'illustre l'attaque d'une bergerie dans la région de Thiès, où des gardiens ont été agressés avec une brutalité extrême. La violence s'exprime également en milieu urbain, où des agressions à l'arme blanche entraînent des conséquences fatales, ajoutant à un climat général d'anxiété et de peur au sein de la population. Le phénomène de l'insécurité se modernise et s'adapte aux nouvelles habitudes de consommation. Les autorités mettent en garde contre la prolifération d'arnaques sophistiquées liées à l'achat de moutons sur les plateformes numériques. Cette forme de délinquance, qui exploite la confiance des acheteurs durant une période de forte demande, révèle une capacité d'adaptation des réseaux criminels. Elle nécessite une vigilance accrue de la part des citoyens et une réponse technologique et préventive de la part des forces de l'ordre pour contrer ces menaces émergentes qui ajoutent un risque financier à l'insécurité physique déjà prégnante. La répétition annuelle de cette flambée de drames routiers et d'actes criminels à l'approche de la Tabaski interpelle sur l'efficacité des dispositifs préventifs et répressifs. Malgré les campagnes de sensibilisation, la courbe des incidents ne semble pas s'infléchir, ce qui pourrait suggérer une inadéquation des stratégies mises en œuvre ou un manque de moyens pour les appliquer rigoureusement. La situation exige une analyse approfondie des causes profondes de ces phénomènes récurrents et une réévaluation des politiques de sécurité publique pour mieux protéger les citoyens et garantir que la fête reste un moment de piété et de partage, plutôt qu'une source de deuil et de tragédie. Read the full article

[soshenko33]

vostok 7

reenactment / radiofilm 2020 project of Anton Kats

Vostok 7 is a reenactment of the spaceship that has not been built yet. The radiofilm is an artistic study of the Vostok Program of Soviet Space Travel that began with Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight, Vostok 1 in 1961, and ended with Vostok 6 in 1963 with the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkowa. The semi-fictional narrative is introduced from the perspective of the first radio frequency between humans in space: established between the Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 spaceships. Remembering its three human incarnations in Kherson, South Ukraine, the radio frequency addresses the relationship between eco-logical and ego-logical concerns reflected within a human experience.

Suggesting radio, sound, and listening as dynamic methods of self-enquiry, politics and processes of inner and outer-space exploration, the colonization of space is taken into consideration, in order to reflect and to critique contemporary colonial forces of separation and marginalising segregation processes on earth. The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkowa, is an anti-hero and protagonist of the play giving voice to the current political developments in Post-Soviet Russia, such as radical constitutional amendments: including allowance of two more six-year presidential terms for Vladimir Putin and introducing a constitutional ban of same-sex marriage and patriotic education in schools, among others.

Proposing a diversity of strategies to overcome unsustainable, separative, and exploitative tendencies of the ego  – in light of intense collective and individual struggle and near-death experiences – the piece is a listening manual anchored in the politics of war, dementia and love ethics; transmigration, gasoline and music. The point of departure for the video is a radio play accompanied by seven illustrations rooted in artistic research at the Russian State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation in Moscow. Together with the illustrations, the radio play acts as a dynamic score for the performance of a single-shot video-choreography embracing elements of an interactive installation, sculpture and a performance lecture. Remotely directed during the current pandemic, the work unfolds in response to the increase of isolationist policies in (Eastern) Europe and addresses the core question: how can the synthesis of fine art and sound art respond to site-specific problems in the everyday?

The work is developed as a contribution to the RAUPENIMMERSATTISM exhibition at SAVVY Contemporary. The exhibition confronts the endless consumption of our societies and the affluence many hold at the expense of others’ poverty, a collective exhibition is composed as a result of ten months of research, grapplings, and reasonings together. The show unfolds as a choral questioning to challenge structural inequalities and stand alongside positions of vulnerability.

Radiofilm credits: Anna Sorokovaya - artist, Soshenko 33 Anton Kats - film directing, concept and narrative Eugene Filatov - focus puller/1st AC Jared Meier-Klodt - voice recording Igor Kritskiy - light Igor Pavlovic Pointet - VFX ILYICH - sound, composition Louis Becket - sound mixing and mastering Maria Korovkina - project management Marcus Bow Badow, color grading Marcus Eich - VFX Nikita Znak - 2nd AC Shelley Pellegrin - voice Simone Legner - voice fairy Taras Kovach - artist, Soshenko 33 Viktor Ruban - choreography Yarema Malashchuk - camera

[therebelwrites]

I would congratulate you on the election, but it should’ve never been this close and should inspire nothing but immense sobriety. The world has to thank Black voters, particularly Black Womxn, for ousting an individual capable of ending organized human society as we know it if he secured another four years. Had Black people not participated in this election, Trump would’ve won by a landslide. Your victory is paper thin. For the global South, i.e., the vast majority of the world’s population, your job is to not only undo Trump’s legacy, but also Obama’s.

You see, Joe, the administration you served was a cruel joke; masterfully branded as progressive, while inflicting terror on the world.

I remember sitting in a newsroom in Singapore, after spending four years in George W. Bush’s America, when Obama was inaugurated. The newsroom was international in coverage and staff. From Caracas to Cairo to Chiang Mai, there was no doubt that Obama, with his Kenyan heritage and Indonesian upbringing, was not only the U.S.’s president, but our president in the global South, too. Obama’s upbringing was not dissimilar from my own. He reminded me of me. He skillfully managed this masquerade, fooling everyone. It’s no wonder his campaign won Advertising Age’s Marketer of the Year for 2008.

The cruelty came soon after. He destroyed Libya—condemning a society with once the highest human development indicators in Africa into a giant slave market. Under both his, and your watch Joe, very silent coups took place in Latin America, deposing extremely popular leaders like Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo. These were done in a way that kept Obama’s image intact, i.e. under the radar. They were also a betrayal of a pledge Obama made to Hugo Chavez that the era of Washington’s meddling in Latin America was over. Obama also dispatched the might of America’s military to the Pacific to surveil China’s growing power, willfully ignoring the festering ill will from Okinawa to the Philippines of U.S. boots on their soil.

Need I even mention, the drone strikes on Yemeni weddings and the countless killings of children in places where western news cameras don’t go?

[...]

There is no reversing this because it is a return to an order that has been around for most of human history. Western domination is but a blip, an anomaly, a flash in the pan belligerently eager to outlive its day. So your job, Joe and Kamala, is not to restore American preeminence. Short of bombing everyone to oblivion, there is no possible way this can happen. Even that might prove troublesome because both Russia and China have advanced missile systems that can be deployed at a moment’s notice.

Which industrialist, Joe, is going to bring jobs back to the U.S. when, thanks to the global logic of capitalism, they move from country to country in search of people to exploit?

Your task then, Joe and Kamala, is to manage U.S. decline, gracefully and with dignity. Your job is to be honest with 300+ million Americans that they are no longer the most fortunate, powerful, or wealthiest citizens on earth. Far from it. Your job is to make room for newly ascendant powers, and to avoid seeing them as challengers to the U.S.’s relatively short-lived 75-year-old crown. See us as potential partners, not a threat to your fleeting hegemony. This is how you truly rejoin the community of nations.

Joe, you’ve said that you want to form a coalition of democracies to confront autocracies. This is extremely outdated thinking that has no place in 2020. You must abandon the role of moral arbiter. There are more systems competing with the western liberal model today than ever before and they are delivering health, wealth, security, and prosperity for their citizens. The U.S. was nowhere near a democracy when it was developing, Joe. In truth it has never been a democracy for all.

Each country, especially young countries whose borders were drawn in Europe’s capitals, have the right to craft their own path to affluence and pluralism based on their unique set of circumstances and trajectory. Constantly demanding, without reflection, critique, or empathy for colonized histories, that they must accept, as American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “the highly contingent achievements of [western civilization]” as the only viable model is absurd. For it has a worldwide track record of deepening violence rather than raising the quality of life.

If you want to confront autocratic thinking, you may want to start right at home, where 71 million of your fellow citizens voted for an individual who demonstrated a naked bombast for autocracy without reprieve for four straight years. He gave them a taste and they loved what they saw.

[...]

In all likelihood, Joe, you will ignore every word of this letter. Your foreign policy will be dictated by weapons manufacturers, bankers, and oil barons. You will remain a capitalist country in the truest sense of the word because the interests of capital will control decision-making, not the interests of public and global good. I see your transition team is predictably stacked with executives from Amazon, Uber, AirBnB, and JPMorgan, amongst others. You will air tired re-runs about democracy and free markets while the rest of the world changes the channel and continues to forge ahead.

But if you choose to ignore all these approaches and opt for the same fool hardy approach that has no place in a rapidly changing world, where no single country can monopolize military, economic, or cultural power, you will pave the way for a younger, smarter, more astute, and more deadly heir to Trump, who will condemn the U.S. and the planet to a fate worse than any pandemic.

[psionicmushroom]

Fertility at or below replacement is just what happens when people get richer. The whole "white genocide" thing is rich white people complaining about their own success. A few generations into affluence and nobody wants to have 7 children because it's just not tenable labor and cost wise from an individual woman's perspective to have all those kids and care for them, feed them, send them to university, etc. lower fertility rates mean that people expect their kids a) not to die in their first 5 years on earth and b) grow up to become educated people with decently paid jobs. That's not genocide, that's economic prosperity and gender equality.

Furthermore, much of the reason why European countries have reached fertility at or below replacement faster than currently developing countries is because European imperialism caused a lot of countries to get trapped in the second stage of the demographic transition, thanks to political instability and the legacy of economic exploitation it left behind. Life is cheaper, and people have a lot of kids to make up for it.

Also, if you're going to critique Islam and other non-western religions for having an inherent ideological tendency towards high fertility, I'd remind you that Christianity has ideologically favored high fertility for thousands of years, and has long discouraged contraception and abortion. Nevertheless, many Christian dominated nations have fertility at or below replacement rate. Furthermore, in Matlab, Bangladesh, fertility rates decreased by 1.5 children per woman when contraception, family planning, and reproductive health services were introduced. The only reason fertility didn't dip below replacement rate was because condoms alone can't make you rich. Bangladesh is a Muslim country. How religious you are is a lot more important for determining fertility rate than what religion you are, and a lot of people are willing to be secular in bed if it means they don't have to have 1.5 kids they don't want.

Finally, the aging population of many European countries is a challenge, but it's a better challenge to have than uncontrollable, exponential population growth. If you've ever looked at an exponential graph, youll know that exponential population growth can't be sustained for much longer than a century in any one country. Much longer than that and you get more people than any country could feed. The alternative to exponential population growth, population stability, demands alternating patterns of decline and regrowth in population. That means that sometimes you're going to have more old people than young people, and that's okay, because it's a better problem than having way too many people in general.

It's utterly idiotic to blame brown people and immigrants for "problems" that are actually benefits which Europeans themselves chose over the course of the 20th century. But I guess that's just how reactionaries think, always knee-jerk blaming the darkest skinned person in the room for their own lack of critical thinking faculties and extreme opposition to just being nice to people for a change.

How many years ago did a country in Europe have a replacement level fertility rate?

Keep reading

[nothingman]

Iowa state Sen. Mark Chelgren wants to tweak the dossier that candidates submit when they apply to teaching jobs at the state’s universities. In addition to a CV, sample syllabuses, and some writing samples, he’d like one other thing: their party registration.

“I’m under the understanding that right now they can hire people because of diversity,” he told the Des Moines Register. And where are university faculty less diverse than party registration? That’s the theory behind the proposed bill Chelgren has filed, which would institute a hiring freeze at state universities until the number of registered Republicans on faculty comes within 10 percent of the number of registered Democrats.

Bills proposed in state legislatures are easy fodder for outrage — some wacky proposals get introduced every year. But Chelgren — who, it should be noticed, claimed to hold a degree in business that turned out to be a certificate from a Sizzler steakhouse — is not an outlier. In North Carolina, a similar proposal was introduced and then tabled earlier this month. And at CPAC, the conclave for conservatives held in Washington last month, newly appointed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos zeroed in on college faculty. She warned college students in the crowd to be wary of attempts to indoctrinate them: “The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think.”

Fear of a liberal university faculty has been a feature of modern conservatism for decades, woven into the very foundations of the modern conservative movement —although the attacks on universities have not always taken the form of legislation or calls for “ideological diversity.” The adoption of the language of diversity and pluralism serves mainly as a new way to skewer the left using its own vocabulary.

But no matter how often conservatives call attention to the ideological imbalance in the professorate, they fail to affect the makeup of college faculties. Indeed, faculties are markedly more liberal today than they were when the fight began. But persuading sociology departments to hire more Republicans is not really the point. Instead, these attacks have turned into a tool for undermining higher education, part of a far more serious — and far less conservative — project of dismantling American universities altogether.

First came the Red Scare, then a general fear of Keynesians and New Deal sympathizers

It began with the communists. (Almost everything about modern conservatism begins with the communists.) At the dawn of the cold war, the Red Scare snaked its way through American universities, targeting left-leaning professors who found that not even tenure could save them from political persecution. The scare turned conservatives and liberals alike into happy red-hunters, as administrators and professors entered a contest of patriotic one-upmanship: loyalty oaths, hearings, purges.

Ray Ginger, a historian at Harvard Business School, was forced to resign in 1954 when he refused to take the loyalty oath Harvard demanded of him and his wife. They had to leave their home; his wife, nine months pregnant at the time, was forced to give birth as a charity patient. The marriage soon fell apart, and alcoholism claimed Ginger’s life at age 50. Rutgers fired two professors and allowed a third to resign after they refused to testify before the Senate red-hunt committee. No US university would hire them, and two were forced out of academia altogether.

The university scare more closely resembled the Red Scare in Hollywood than the one within the federal government. With the government, the fear was straightforward espionage: spies and blackmail and treason. With entertainment and education, it was the more nebulous fear of brainwashing, a worry that there was a softness in the American mind that could be exploited by nefarious filmmakers — and professors.

For conservatives, anxieties about communist professors co-existed with anxieties about liberal ones. Indeed, a significant part of the conservative theory of politics was that the slippery slope toward communism began with New Deal-style liberalism. In his 1951 book God and Man at Yale, written in the midst of the university scare, William F. Buckley Jr. had little to say about communists. He instead made the case that Yale University had become infested with liberal professors who, in promoting secularism and Keynesian economics, had torn the school from its traditionally Christian and capitalist roots.

As McCarthyism waned, Buckley’s argument became more prevalent on the right. Thanks to growing affluence and the GI Bill, millions more students were entering America’s colleges and universities. They were unlikely to become communists, but Keynesians? That was far easier to imagine.

In a 1963 piece for his “Ivory Tower” column in National Review (a regular feature on higher education — underscoring just how much the state of America’s colleges worried the right), Russell Kirk dismissed concerns with communist professors. “People who think that the Academy is honeycombed with crypto-Communists are wide of the mark,” he wrote. “At most, never more than 5 per cent of American college teachers were Communists.” The real threat, Kirk maintained, came from liberal groupthink.

And how had the academy become so biased toward liberalism? Because administrators promoted liberals and demoted conservatives. That was the common conservative critique, anyway. William Rusher, publisher of National Review, laid out the plight of these conservative scholars: “They face many tribulations. Advancement comes hard. They are victimized by their departments.” Passed over for funds to support their research, Rusher argued, these conservative professors became a “neglected generation of scholars.”

The arguments that folks like Buckley and Kirk and Rusher were advancing in the 1950s and 1960s are nearly indistinguishable from those conservatives make today. But while the arguments have remained the same, something crucial has changed: the case for what to do about it.

The conservative diagnosis that universities are liberal hotbeds has remained consistent, but the prescription for action has changed

Conservatives are certainly correct in their central claim: In the professoriate at large, and particularly in the humanities, the number of liberals and leftists far outstrip the number of conservative. This varies by field (you will find conservatives in in economics departments, business schools, and some sciences) and by school (Hillsdale College and Bob Jones University are hardly hotbeds of liberalism). But in general, the ivory tower indisputably tilts left. Whether this constitutes a problem that needs solving is open to debate, but even among those who feel it is a problem, solutions are hard to come by.

In God and Man at Yale, Buckley held that left-leaning faculty should be replaced by ones more in line with the university’s more conservative traditions. The best guardians of those traditions, he argued, were not faculty or administrators but alumni, who should be given the power to determine the college’s curriculum. They would do this through the power of the purse: withholding donations until the university administration became so desperate that they restructured the curriculum and changed up the faculty to meet alumni demands.

What’s important here is not the mechanism for change — Buckley’s alumni model was unworkable (it assumed Yale alumni all agreed with his goals and had more financial leverage than they did) — but the theory behind it. Buckley was opposed to Yale’s liberal orthodoxies not because they were orthodoxies, but because they were liberal. He believed the university should be indoctrinating students; he just preferred they be indoctrinated in free-market capitalism and Christianity.

Over time, conservative efforts shifted from changing the liberal makeup of the university to building alternative institutions and safeguarding conservative students. Organizations like Young Americans for Freedom and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute became gathering spaces for young right-wingers, while a swath of new think tanks were erected for the purpose of getting conservative research and ideas into circulation. By the 1980s, anti-liberal student magazines like the Dartmouth Review served as feeders for Buckley’s National Review and other conservative publications.

But what of the professors? They came under fire again in the 1990s and 2000s. Books like Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education popularized the idea that professors infected their students with relativism, liberalism, and leftism, laying the intellectual groundwork for a new effort to limit the influence of liberal scholars.

But when those attacks came, they came wrapped in an entirely new logic and language: ideological diversity.

Marshaling liberal arguments about viewpoint diversity in support of the conservative cause

Let’s pause here for a second, because this is important. In the 1990s, there was a real shift in American culture and politics, centered on multiculturalism and the postmodernism. Multiculturalism held that diversity was a positive value, because people from different backgrounds brought with them different perspectives, and a wide range of perspectives was good for intellectual debate. Postmodernism, a more academic idea, held — at least in some of its guises — that truth was inaccessible, perhaps nonexistent, that everything might be relative, everything might be perspective.

Conservatives didn’t like either one of these shifts. Social conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett saw multiculturalism as a thinly veiled attack on the West (read: white European culture). Likewise, the rejection of knowable truths was an affront to believers in a fixed moral universe based on shared values. Multiculturalism, postmodernism — these were anathema to their conservatism.

Except — multiculturalism was also incredibly useful. If diversity of perspectives was good, and if universities valued that diversity enough for it be a factor in hiring, then surely the paucity of conservative professors was a wrong to be remedied?

Enter the pro-diversity conservatives, who have taken the arguments of the left and turned them into tools to expand conservatives’ presence in university faculty. The most visible early proponent of this approach was a former leftist, David Horowitz, who in 2003 founded the Campaign for Fairness and Inclusion in Higher Education (later renamed Students for Academic Freedom). The very name of the campaign suggested that Horowitz was committed to a pluralistic model of higher education dedicated to equity and balance.

The central project of Students for Academic Freedom was the Academic Bill of Rights. In its definition of academic freedom, the Academic Bill of Rights homed in immediately on “intellectual diversity.” It never mentioned conservatism, but rather advocated protecting students from the imposition of “political, ideological, or religious orthodoxy.” Given that Horowitz had widely criticized the “one-party classroom” and the liberal atmosphere of the academy, this equation of academic freedom with intellectual diversity amounted to a call to protect conservative professors and students.

That same framework could also be found in the 2009 book The Politically Correct University, published by the American Enterprise Institute. It included a chapter laying out “the route to academic pluralism” and another that claimed “the academy’s definition and practice of diversity is too narrow and limited,” arguing instead “for a more inclusive definition of diversity that encompasses intellectual diversity.”

In some rare cases, conservatives borrowed the language not just of diversity but of postmodernism. Horowitz asserted that the reason there needs to be more ideological diversity on campus is that “there are no ‘correct’ answers to controversial issues.” This is a long way indeed from conservatives’ traditional rejection of relativism. Indeed, one could fairly wonder whether there was anything conservative about it at all.

Getty

William F. Buckley wanted Yale to hire more Christian capitalists — but not because they brought “diverse viewpoints” to the campus. Nor did he want to shutter the history department.

So conservatives found a new argument for hiring more conservative professors. What they had not found was a way to convince universities to actually hire them. And this is the perennial problem with conservative critiques of higher education, the reason they scurried away into think tanks or places like Hillsdale college: There doesn’t appear to be any mechanism to make universities hire more conservative faculty members.

This is in sharp contrast to the right’s power to shape precollege education. Through school boards and state legislatures, conservatives have had real impact on public school curricula around the nation. They have won wars over textbooks, standards, even Advanced Placement guidelines. But that power smacks into a wall when it comes to higher education, where traditions of academic freedom and shared governance between faculty and administrators create real limits to external meddling.

Which is why conservatives are so often left lobbing rhetorical bombs at universities, and why bills like those in Iowa and North Carolina usually wind up quietly tabled. There is no legislative fix for ideological imbalance in the classroom, nor any general agreement that it is a problem that should be fixed.

The most interesting work being done on the topic on liberal academic groupthink is at Heterodox Academy, directed by the NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. The organization brings together scholars from across the country who are committed to promoting greater viewpoint diversity on campuses. But look through the list of solutions Haidt and his colleagues provide, and you won’t find a single piece of legislation among them. Indeed, what you’ll find reading lists, student government resolutions, college “heterodoxy” ratings — is aimed almost entirely at students, not at hiring committees.

If liberal arts departments won’t hire more conservatives, why not defund the liberal arts?

The right is still intent on undercutting what they see as the liberal political power of the university. But they’re taking a different tack, pursuing their goals in more structural ways: weakening tenure, slashing budgets, upping teaching loads. It would be easy to dismiss this as simply a result of austerity programs, which have cut public services to the bone in states across America. But in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, however, the cuts have been accompanied by rhetoric that makes the true goal clear: attacking curriculums and professors who seem too liberal, and weakening the overall power of the university.

Take North Carolina. Since Republicans took over the state government in the Tea Party wave of 2010, the state’s universities have been under constant attack. Centers on the environment, voter engagement, and poverty studies have all been shuttered by the Board of Governors, which is appointed by the state legislature.

No sooner had Pat McCrory come into the governor’s office in 2013 than he began making broadsides against the university, using stark economic measures to target liberal arts programs, like gender studies, with which he disagreed. His stated view was that university programs should be funded based on how many of their graduates get jobs.

Notably, the McCrory campaign was bankrolled by Art Pope, founder of the Pope Center for Higher Education (now the Martin Center), an organization dedicated to increasing the “diversity of ideas” taught on campus. As its policy director, Jay Schalin, explained in 2015, the crisis at the university stems from “the ideas that are being discussed and promoted”: “multiculturalism, collectivism, left-wing post-modernism.” He wants less Michel Foucault on campus, more Ayn Rand.

But bills calling for the banning of works by leftist historian Howard Zinn or hiring professors based on party registration haven’t yet made it out of the proposal stage. What has? Steep funding cuts that have led to higher tuition, smaller faculties, and reduced access to higher education for low-income students.

That is the real threat to the professorate, and to the university more broadly. And as with the strategic conservative embrace of postmodernism, it also represents an erosion of a worldview that once understood the value of an advanced education beyond mere job preparation or vocational training. Unable to reverse the ivory tower’s tilt, many on the right are willing to smash it altogether, another sign of the nihilism infecting the conservative project more broadly.

Nicole Hemmer, a Vox columnist, is the author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. She is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and co-host of the Past Present podcast.

The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart, often scholarly excursions into the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically written by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

via Vox - All

[comm404lululemon-blog]

Lululemon Brand Analysis

Lululemon Athletica is a yoga-inspired, technical athletic apparel company. Founded by Chip Wilson in Vancouver, Canada, the company’s original merchandise was intended for women to wear while practicing yoga. Since its beginning in 1998, however, Lululemon has expanded its brand by creating a men’s clothing section, and targeting other activities such as cycling, crossfit, and running. Now with 354 store locations worldwide, Lululemon is one of the most recognizable brands in high-end activewear. The Lululemon brand represents not only clothing, but an entire lifestyle centered around activity, community, and sweat. Part of the way Lululemon sends such a strong message is by offering in-store yoga classes and through social media campaigns. This branding has helped Lululemon gain a cult-like following amongst affluent and physically fit women and men around the world, but has also lead to criticism and controversy, as we will discuss further in this post. 

Lululemon sells a “yogi” lifestyle, claiming to uphold intrinsic values which will supposedly allow those within the lifestyle to discover their “true self.” The language that the brand uses suggests that those who wear Lululemon will be able to shed negativity from their lives, and accept themselves wholeheartedly. However, the visual cues of Lululemon’s advertisements tell a very different story, showcasing conventionally beautiful and skinny women. Furthermore, the ability to purchase Lululemon requires consumers to be fairly affluent. While preaching acceptance and an inner peace, Lululemon creates an exclusive community through its branding and advertising, which denies access to those who do not fit its extremely narrow body standards or possess the monetary wealth necessary to purchase its clothing.

One of the critiques that Lululemon has faced several times is that the brand only caters to “fit” women and openly excludes and denies larger women access to their clothes. Equally as problematic has been the brands response to demands for larger clothing. When plus-sized customers exercised their frustration that the brand did not carry any sizes larger than a 12 --keeping in mind that the average American woman wears a 14 --Lululemon’s CEO responded by saying that “it takes 30 percent more fabric to create plus-size clothes, meaning that [we] would have to charge a higher price for them”. Complaints from customers also arose after the release of their new Luon fabric. Customers claimed that the new fabric was piling and coming apart with only a couple of wears, to which CEO Chip Wilson replied “frankly some women's bodies just don't actually work for [Lululemon]. They don't work for some women's bodies...it's really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there over a period of time, how much they use it."

After this incident, many current and former Lululemon employees came forward and said that the company intentionally shuns plus sized shoppers by hiding their size 12 merchandise and limiting the amount of stock that they carry of certain items to intentionally deter plus-sized women from purchasing their clothing. Recently, a woman went to Facebook after a traumatizing experience at a store in Utah, explaining that employees whispered “do we even have anything in her size” and started laughing with one another while she was shopping. While the brand did offer the woman a sincere apology, this recent incident further demonstrates the mentality that backs the brand. 

Lululemon has programs called “Strategic Sales” which are outlined on their website. These programs are meant to “spread the yoga love and help raise the level of health in our communities.” Further analysis shows, however, that these programs really only make their products more accessible to those who already have access to it. For example, Lululemon offers a discount for technical athletic apparel for sports teams. And if Lululemon was truly as invested in raising the level of health in our communities as they say they are, perhaps they would work to make their products more accessible to people who aren’t already active. Rather, Lululemon offers discounts to people who already fit their target audience --like athletes and yogis-- which further promotes the company’s image and status. In this way, these programs are much more about controlling who wears their clothes than they are about promoting health.

Similar to the Strategic Sales program is Lululemon’s Ambassador program, where yoga teachers are given free Lululemon apparel in exchange for teaching in-store yoga classes. The overwhelming majority of ambassadors are white, attractive, and fit, which not only presents yoga in a very particular way, but excludes many marginalized groups. The other troubling aspects of the program go beyond this, as Diana Vitarelli points out in her article. Vitarelli describes how many yoga instructors can’t actually afford to shop at Lululemon. “[The company] should stop trying to subtly advertise in those studios by giving the teachers who stand in front of the rooms free clothing. A lot of those teachers are poor and struggling. They are going to take the free clothes because they are broke and probably need them.” Vitarelli ultimately suggests that the Lululemon ambassadors program exploits yoga teachers, and uses them to promote a glamorized view of yoga in order to make the “yoga lifestyle” seem more appealing to customers.

The caption of this photo reads: “In yoga philosophy the Four Aims of Life (purusharthas) are a roadmap to freedom. They lead us away from our broken record of our daily lives to a symphony of potentials, guiding us to purusha (our true self) and a sense of purpose and universal values.” This Instagram post aligns their brand with a grounded lifestyle which is rooted in the fundamental values of yoga, suggesting that purchasing Lululemon apparel will lead its consumers to a fulfilling life. However, the accompanying photo shows a conventionally beautiful woman, suggesting that perhaps fitting this body ideal is equally necessary for a fulfilling life.

Lululemon’s “manifesto” which is featured on their bags consists of a variety of “feel good” phrases and mantras, many of which blatantly contradict the way in which Lululemon conducts business. Examples of this include:

“Sweat once a day to regenerate your skin.” Lululemon consistently emphasizes the importance of sweat in their branding, as if to suggest that those who do not engage in a lifestyle of consistent exercise are not truly a part of the Lululemon “community”. 

“Friends are more important than money.” Despite the claim that money should not be a major focus of one’s life, to be able to afford Lululemon’s clothing requires consumers to have a certain level of affluence.

“The perfect tombstone would read, ‘all used up,’” ; “Visualize your eventual demise, it can have an amazing effect on how you live in this moment.” By alluding to death, the brand attempts to inspire its consumer base. These phrases suggests that Lululemon’s clothing provides a roadmap for a fulfilling life. The brand urges their consumers not to waste any time and to work hard at achieving their goals, which are assumed to be fitness-based.

“Salt, High fructose corn syrup, Butter = Early Death” This statement further aligns their brand with a healthy lifestyle and excludes those who perhaps enjoy indulging in these types of foods.

By defining the “yogi” lifestyle through its branding, Lululemon commodifies not only yoga, but physical fitness and wellbeing in general. It places itself at the center of a world in which stress and negativity cease to exist but shuts its doors to this world to those who cannot fit the identity of the ideal consumer Lululemon has envisioned. Through its small sizes and expensive merchandise, Lululemon sends a clear message that its brand is reserved for those who fit a conventionally small body type and a high level of affluence. Additionally, people that represent the brand - its CEO and employees - have openly demonstrated and talked about the ways in which the brand aims to remain exclusive. While preaching the importance of health and fitness, Lululemon constructs a world in which a small subset of people are able to reap these benefits of their brand, while excluding  the majority of the population. In turn, these people have expressed how discouraged they are to be alienated by the brand. Even for  those who do fit Lululemon’s ideal identity, they corrupt the pillars of yoga: inner peace, strength, groundedness, by commodifying this lifestyle.

[surnaal]

#Sénégal #Insécurité #Tabaski #Criminalité L'imminence des festivités de la Tabaski est assombrie par une détérioration manifeste de la sécurité sur plusieurs fronts. Une série d'événements tragiques endeuille la nation, à commencer par une augmentation alarmante des accidents de la circulation. Des collisions mortelles, survenues notamment dans la région de Louga et sur des axes nationaux majeurs, ont coûté la vie à plusieurs personnes et fait de nombreux blessés graves. Le drame touche toutes les couches de la société, comme en témoigne le décès d'une jeune étudiante dans un accident alors qu'elle rejoignait sa famille pour la célébration, transformant une perspective de retrouvailles joyeuses en une profonde affliction. Ces incidents répétés soulignent une vulnérabilité critique sur le réseau routier durant cette période de forte affluence. Parallèlement à cette hécatombe routière, une vague de criminalité et de banditisme déferle sur le territoire. Les zones rurales ne sont pas épargnées, avec des arrestations significatives de voleurs de bétail dans le centre du pays, illustrant la persistance de ce fléau économique et social pour les éleveurs. La violence de ces actes atteint des niveaux particulièrement inquiétants, comme l'illustre l'attaque d'une bergerie dans la région de Thiès, où des gardiens ont été agressés avec une brutalité extrême. La violence s'exprime également en milieu urbain, où des agressions à l'arme blanche entraînent des conséquences fatales, ajoutant à un climat général d'anxiété et de peur au sein de la population. Le phénomène de l'insécurité se modernise et s'adapte aux nouvelles habitudes de consommation. Les autorités mettent en garde contre la prolifération d'arnaques sophistiquées liées à l'achat de moutons sur les plateformes numériques. Cette forme de délinquance, qui exploite la confiance des acheteurs durant une période de forte demande, révèle une capacité d'adaptation des réseaux criminels. Elle nécessite une vigilance accrue de la part des citoyens et une réponse technologique et préventive de la part des forces de l'ordre pour contrer ces menaces émergentes qui ajoutent un risque financier à l'insécurité physique déjà prégnante. La répétition annuelle de cette flambée de drames routiers et d'actes criminels à l'approche de la Tabaski interpelle sur l'efficacité des dispositifs préventifs et répressifs. Malgré les campagnes de sensibilisation, la courbe des incidents ne semble pas s'infléchir, ce qui pourrait suggérer une inadéquation des stratégies mises en œuvre ou un manque de moyens pour les appliquer rigoureusement. La situation exige une analyse approfondie des causes profondes de ces phénomènes récurrents et une réévaluation des politiques de sécurité publique pour mieux protéger les citoyens et garantir que la fête reste un moment de piété et de partage, plutôt qu'une source de deuil et de tragédie. Read the full article