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allen-howell · 5 years

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What is Freedom?

What most working class Americans possess is nothing like true freedom. They are kept just comfortable enough so that they will continue to serve as cogs in the machinery—but their productivity has been harnessed in the same way as has the productivity of those lower down in the pecking order who work 40 or more hours per week and yet still must apply for public assistance. Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased approximately 400% since 1950. The productivity of the labor force has increased dramatically, but wages have been uncoupled from that productivity—starting at around the Nixon era. From top to bottom—from the highest paid to the lowest paid wage earners (those who actually work)—we receive a meager fraction of the true fruits of our labor. Our wages, adjusted for inflation, are nothing like 400% higher than wages were in 1950. The number of hours we work per week also is not 400% lower. The American dream is predicated on the bedrock principle that hard work pays off. We have been taught to believe that a) the harder a person works, b) the more skill and talent a person possesses, and c) the more ability a person has to work well with others; the more success each such person ought to be able to enjoy. That’s what the concept of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness means to most Americans. Most people who “want to make American great again” probably would accept that definition.

The fat cats who own banks, corporations, governments, and so forth, have figured out how to keep us working their fields (so to speak) in an increasingly profitable manner from 1950 until now. They have figured out how to make our slice of the pie narrower and narrower, although we are the ones producing the pie and helping it to increase in size relative to the overall U.S. population. Even those of us who have figured out how to start our own businesses end up paying most of our profits to the fat cats at the top because smaller businesses must compete on price with publicly traded businesses who are unfairly favored by all three branches of the government. Therefore, small businesses are not able to afford to pay employees substantially more than big corporations pay employees because of the economy of scale created by the unlevel playing field that was becoming the new status quo as Nixon and his Supreme Court appointees began to work things out. They managed to fix things so that “our wealth circuit got plugged into our political circuit.” Government officials who work for the fat cats (pretty much all of them regardless of their political stripes) have continued to rig the game against the little guy. Because of high interest rates, low corporate tax rates, and exorbitant pay for top-level managers, we all end up working for the same few fat cats who exist at the very top of the pyramid.

To keep this system working and to keep us from revolting, all the fat cats need to do is make sure that, in the words of George Orwell, “some animals are more equal than others.” Even though we all get milked, shorn, and butchered, those of us who live in nicer houses in nicer neighborhoods are content to allow those at lower socioeconomic levels to suffer unfairly because their pain doesn’t touch us directly. We watch police brutality on the news but it doesn’t move us. We see public schools that are grossly underfunded and it doesn’t affect us. We have been taught to think of each other as different—depending on race, religion, and so forth. The fat cats have artificially divided us so that we will not work together to fight the oppression that touches all of us—as long as it doesn’t touch us equally: “Well, at least I’m better off than that guy over there.”

When we vote to preserve the status quo (voting for Joe Biden is a good example, but voting for Donald Trump, in a sneakier way, also is), we vote to keep ourselves at our current levels of freedom, which, as I’ve already explained, is not true freedom—because the quality and quantity of our labor has been uncoupled from our wages. The fat cats have figured out how to steal our productivity in the same way that Kings in wealthy kingdoms have stolen from the peasants who work “their” land. We still haven’t awoken to the fact that we all are yoked—that none of us are truly free.

The primary hindrance for all of us is a fear-based belief in scarcity. That’s why austerity is so devastating. “How you gonna pay for that?” We have failed to adjust our expectations higher as productivity has improved. This belief plays right into the hands of the fat cats. In this vastly wealthy country, there is enough for everyone to live well without exhausting the resources of the planet and without bullying other countries. We do not have to live in the world of Charles Dickens. But the fat cats have figured out how to keep the mid-level frogs on simmer so that they won’t align themselves with the increasingly desperate frogs who are being cooked at higher temperatures.

The way out of this dilemma is probably not going to be as simple as “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” As George Carlin points out: “Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU.” The only hope to fix this mess and get our productivity hooked back up to our wages is to reduce the influence of the fat cats who together control the planetary economic system. UNPOPULAR OPINION (at least to the fat cats): WHEREAS, money is the predominant way to control this planet; and WHEREAS, the fat cats possess most of the money; THEREFORE, we need to remove most of their money from them. Until we do, they will retain their influence and easily rig the next system—whether capitalism or communism. The real problem is how money flows and who controls that flow.

The people who are talented and industrious still deserve to be compensated in proportion to their talent and industry—particularly if their high ethical standards match their talent and industry. In a just system, those who would inevitably succeed at the highest levels should be able to live very well, as long as their high standard of living would not require others to live in squalor. Collectively, humanity would need to agree not to exploit and prey on each other and not to exploit the planet. We would need to agree that hard work and talent should pay off but that, at certain income levels, most of the surplus wealth of individuals and of corporations should be used to fund infrastructure and other items that can be clearly justified as beneficial for the common good. Banks and corporations should be limited in size and scope and occupations and industries that exist primarily to skim wealth from regular people should be abolished. The fat cats cannot hope to spend even a fraction of their wealth in ways that benefit them personally so we all should admit that, most of all, their wealth has been used to control the rest of us—their wars, their diseases, their “cures,” and their need for there to be so many of us all crowded together in utter dependence on them and on their systems.

Will the fat cats agree to all of this? Will their puppet politicians write and enforce the laws that would strip their masters of power? In short, can there be a solution that happens at the ballot box—or will the voter revolution that some envision end up with torches and pitchforks (or assault rifles and missiles) after all? If George Carlin was right, we must resign ourselves to our fate: “It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.” He was referring to our educational system that now indoctrinates us in ways that make it easy for our masters to keep controlling us. If he was right, we need to educate ourselves in some other, better way so that we can stand up in unity with our fellow wage-earners and come to some agreements that will not allow for future predation. If Carlin is right, the fat cats will never agree with us. As Frederick Douglass stated: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” For the demand to be made in a way that foregoes bloodshed, everyone who works for a living will need to understand that we’re all in this together. We will need to come to an understanding that is based on the underlying principles of mutual abundance and justice. We will need to overcome our predatory instincts and allow our best motives to come to the front.

Carlin was right about our education system. Not only is education terrible at educating everyone from all walks of life, it is intentionally so. Those on the higher rungs of life have long been taught how to exploit others rather than being taught how to create a rising tide that could lift all ships. Our fat cat masters know where the weak place is in their vicious circle. If people could be truly educated instead of being indoctrinated, everything would change. If viable solutions are available and humanity continues down its predatory and mutually exploitative path, it is because we will be unable to discover the truths that are hidden in plain sight.

#freedom #carlin #bernie #biden #communism #capitalism #socialism #education #democratic socialism

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years

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Skepticism and Certitude in an Age of Relativism: The Dance of Science and Truth (Part 1)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us….” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

This is an apt description of the time in which we live.

As a cultural phenomenon, isolation and loneliness are on the rise as are suicides even among celebrities who have “made” it in terms of material success and fulfillment.

We know more about the universe-from black holes to quantum fields - and about the human mind as cognitive and neuroscience leap forward into new frontiers, but we are still naively shocked by evil: violence perpetrated by gang members, or the casual disregard for the dignity of persons demonstrated by those of any age or socioeconomic class.

We live in an age of “what is true for you might not be true for me” and “Who are you to judge?”. We are warned to be “tolerant”, but who even pretends that this means to be tolerant of a religious perspective or traditional morality?

Where does this leave us? Consider this remark made by Pope Benedict XVI:

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.

The sad reality is that this dictatorship can destroy a culture and fracture the connectedness for which we are hardwired.

We Really are Hardwired for Connection

The neurological connections which contribute to our social behaviors can be seen as the foundation for building culture. In an informative panel discussion at the World Science Festival in 2017, active research into the “social synapse” was discussed but not until a very general definition of “culture” was agreed upon by the participating scientists which included anthropologists, a biologist, a neuroscientist, and a Paleolithic archaeologist. The loose definition was ‘knowledge and skills learned from others and the ability to build on this shared knowledge.’

Cars as Nutcrackers

Research shows that animals display this kind of sharing and even demonstrate a kind of creativity. One example given was of Japanese crows who have “learned” that cars can be used as tools to crack open their nuts. In another amusing anecdote, it was related how one of Jane Goodall’s chimps had learned to bang two kerosene cans to make a terrific racket. Incorporating this into his dominance display contributed to his meteoric rise as alpha male of the group.

Apparently, however, advances in research have demonstrated quite convincingly that the human species has the capacity to build culture in spades compared to other animals. One difference that contributes to this “ratcheted up” ability is the capacity to use verbal instructions (teaching)-even in very young children who were given a puzzle to solve and who shared insights with others in the group.

Additional Complexity in Humans

Although the capacity for acquiring new behaviors from others appears across species, humans give meaning and symbolism to certain behaviors which are also passed on.

It seems then that we should look for another more complete definition of culture and its attributes. John Paul II observed in Centissimus annus:

Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work, and death.

He continues;

At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted.

What is Truth? The Dance of Science and Truth (Part 2)

We don’t have to be Pontius Pilate to ask this question.

In academic circles and the culture at large, the story is that there is no such thing as “truth.” If there is, most still cling to the idea that truth is what the scientific method can verify, professing this belief dogmatically and definitively.

But even in science there is a creeping doubt about our ability to “know” anything out there.

This fear or doubt is based loosely on a superficial understanding of the “observer effect” on the behaviour of quantum particles: the presence of an observer appears to alter the outcome of a particle’s behavior. This is interpreted to mean that we have no way of knowing what would happen if we hadn’t observed it!

In other words, even what we say scientifically might actually be a false narrative of “reality.”

What really is true?

The unpacking of the word is daunting especially in an age of relativism.

If we listen to St. Thomas Aquinas, the definition he gives can be summed up as “the conformity or equation of the thing and the intellect.” Or if we refer to Anselm of Canterbury, to know is “to comprehend that something could not be otherwise than as it is grasped.”

But don’t these definitions just lead to all kinds of objections, including observer bias, poor sense perception, the world view coloring our perceptions, and the fact that new data requires integration and interpretation? Isn’t this lack of “objectivity” exactly what relativism (truth is relative to time, culture, perspective, and beliefs) is pointing out?

The search for certitude

It could be argued that the search for certitude began in earnest around the time of Descartes. His famous “cogito ergo sum” was meant to be the starting point to a new theory of knowledge that would eliminate doubt and offer a pathway to certitude. His quest never quite succeeded and the question still haunts us: when do we know that we really know something? One Professor wrote an 800 page analysis of this very question.

Bernard Lonergan, SJ wrote Insight: A Study of Human Understanding in the 1950’s in an attempt to examine this question analyzing both the scientific method and the truths derived from philosophy. Although his work goes far beyond the limits of this post, it would be negligent not to mention it.* His insights into insight, however, seem close to Anselm’s definition mentioned above.

In any case, whether or not one is swayed by the philosophical arguments of relativism’s mantra, “There is no such thing as objective truth,” we do not need to look too far to recognize that we predicate much of our existence on the validity of our observations and our experience. For Lonergan this common sense experience can be a valid starting point for true insight.

From creating new medicines and curative therapies, landing satellites on comets, and sending a rocket to the sun, to running airports and trains without collisions, making laws to govern traffic, designing buildings to withstand earthquakes, or monitoring weather patterns to prevent unnecessary death from hurricanes and tornadoes, we are as certain as we can be that we are not trying to capture shadows. We can even examine the nature of our emotions, the effects of trauma and neglect, design activities and interventions that can increase our cognitive abilities, and take quizzes about happiness expecting to learn how to get more of it!

Even the scientific method uses “filters” to glean information.

There is an instructive observation in a post on perspective from the Vatican Observatory:

One of the phrases that is used to describe filtered images is to call them “false images.” Yes, the filtered image can look quite different from the original. Yet, when it comes to the science of using filters for the purpose of gathering data, it isn’t that the data is “false,” but the false image brings forward different essential data that isn’t self-evident in the original image .

The author continues with this gem:

It is the odd irony of science that sometimes you need to have a “false image” to gain true knowledge of what you are studying. The best example of this was a false image from the Pluto flyby that had a rather psychedelic appearance. Everyone knew that this wasn’t what Pluto looked like. However, it was an essential image for scientists to understand different surface feature on this fascinating dwarf planet.

Skepticism and certitude in science

There seems to be any number of ways that certitude and skepticism play key roles in the scientific method. Consider these words by Fr. Coyne, Director Emeritus of the Vatican Observatory. After noting that he himself had not measured the age of the universe, the velocity of light, or the mass of a proton, he said the following:

When I do my science, I accept what is in the books about those [measurements]… you can’t question everything, or you’ll never do anything… The other issue, however, is a very interesting one, and always when I start saying to my class, “You know, most scientists would agree that…,” I look at myself and I say, “the truth is not democratic! The truth is true or not – regardless of how many scientists think it is true.” So there is that element of being skeptical.

A healthy dose of certitude in a relativistic age

The important point to these considerations is that “certitude” is not required, even in science, to make progress, to make “true” observations, and to make decisions based on the best information we have available to us at the time.

This point is an underlying but significant theme to much of Fr. Spitzer’s work on the existence of God, which can be found on the Magis website as well as most thoroughly in his book, New Proofs for the Existence of God.

So when we encounter the dictatorship of relativism, let’s remember the encouraging words of St. John Paul II, echoing the words of the Master Himself: Be not afraid!

Written by: Maggie Ciskanik, M.S.

#the dance of science and truth

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amateurthinker · 6 years

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Values, Morality and Politics

George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist who researches how people use metaphors to understand the world. One of his most profound insights is the metaphor of the family as a way of understanding both morality and politics. Basically, he says, there are two ways of looking at any moral or political question, and our brains are hard-wired to think in only one of those two ways at any given moment. While you're thinking in one of these two modes, facts that don't fit the current mode are ignored.

This is essentially a theory of virtue ethics, with the additional claim that humans do think this way rather than that they should think this way.

The Left

The nurturant family metaphor represents a certain basket of values, namely:

empathy

fairness

happiness

These values motivated the enlightenment thinkers and their intellectual descendants, as well as the religious left. Generally speaking, we're talking about (in order from left to right):

libertarian socialists

democratic socialists

civil rights activists (feminists, anti-racists, LGBTI activists, religious and atheist activists, etc.)/green party

progressives/social democrats/new deal democrats

There's a lot of variation here, but they're all basically committed to achieving both institutional and socioeconomic progress through peaceful means. Most of these people are likely to be found in the Democratic Party, although some join the Green Party or other small third parties.

The Right

The strict father metaphor represents a different basket of virtues, namely:

power

discipline

purity

The strict father metaphor is motivated by fear and scarcity, and (through the magic of all-too common logical fallacies), generates social hierarchies. Here's how this works:

the ultimate goal is to accumulate power.

the way to accumulate power is to exercise self-discipline.

purity (i.e. adherence to a strict moral code) is assumed to be a sign of self-discipline in worldly affairs.

if one is pure, then one must also have self-discipline and therefore will achieve success (i.e. will accumulate power).

failure to become successful is a sign of impurity and/or lack of discipline.

punishment instills discipline and ensures purity.

therefore, the weak are always to blame, and must be punished for their own good.

This is the logic of oppression, and it underlies every right-wing philosophy. Every single premise can easily be knocked down with a little googling; I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

This logic easily leads to hierarchies of good and bad people. If one group is declared to be more innately virtuous than another, then you suddenly have a dominant class and an underclass. This can be applied to every aspect of life (sex, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, etc.)

Let's look at the specific case of sex (men vs women). Strict father virtues are both universal and sexual; good men are expected to have them, but good women are expected to both have and not have them. A good woman is weak, undisciplined and impure, which is by definition bad. If a woman has manly virtues (power, discipline, purity), this too is bad because it makes her a bad woman. This puts women in a catch-22. If a woman buys into this way of thinking (or if she doesn't but is trapped by it in some other way), then she's screwed.

These virtues motivate conservatives of various stripes, including the religious right. Generally speaking, we're talking about (in order from left to right):

neoliberals

bigots

authoritarians

Once again there's some variation, but they're all basically committed to preserving and extending social hierarchies through force.

Neoliberalism was introduced to the United States by Ronald Reagan and continued up through Barack Obama. Neoliberals are focussed on maximizing corporate profits, and they're willing to make small concessions in civil rights and quality of life protections to accomplish that goal. These are the institutional politicians (and their supporters) in both the Democratic and Republican parties (also known as "Very Serious People"). In general, neoliberals in the democratic party are more willing to let the public eat the crumbs from the master's table, but getting even that from them is a struggle.

Libertarians also fall into this camp because they seek to maximize corporate , but they differ from the institutional Democrats and Republicans by seeking to maximize civil rights while minimizing quality of life protections.

Bigots seek to establish social hierarchies that benefit themselves at others' expense (i.e. "traditional" hierarchies). These are your basic fascists and neo-fascists.

Authoritarians take the saying "lead, follow or get out of the way" as a prescription for life in general. They differ from bigots in that they are willing to give up power if a more powerful person comes along.

Mixtures

As I mentioned earlier, these two ways of thinking can be (and often are) applied on a question-by-question basis. People can have leftist ideas about some parts of their lives, and conservative ideas about other parts of their lives. People can have conservative views about one issue, but leftist views about another issue. People can think differently about "means" and "ends", or they can distinguish between different scenarios. This is what defines the moderate; being comfortable switching back and forth between these two modes of thought depending on the issue at hand.

Polarization

I believe that when people are shaken, whether in their personal lives (divorce, family deaths, etc.), they are forced to re-examine their worldview. The more often they do this, the more uncomfortable it becomes to switch back and forth between left- and right-wing modes of thought. This drives them to seek more consistent positions, which in turn drives them towards either the left or the right.

If the motivating event is national in scale (the attack on 9/11, the great recession, etc.), this will happen to many people and the society will become more polarized than it was before. The United States has experienced several such events, and that is why we've become so polarized.

Marxism

I'd like to take a moment to discuss Marxism. Marxists seek to replace pre-existing social hierarchies with a single hierarchy (the party), while promising that their own hierarchy will somehow peacefully fade away (but only after they've conquered the world). I see this approach as intrinsically flawed for several reasons. First, conservative means lead to conservative ends, so it's probably inevitable that revolutionary Marxism leads to oppressive totalitarian regimes. Second, if social hierarchies are bad in some way, then the Marxist party hierarchy must also be bad in the same way (whatever that is). Third, if it's possible for the Marxist party hierarchy to gradually fade away, then surely traditional social hierarchies can also gradually fade away - which provokes the question of why we should even bother with state socialism in the first place.

This is also where we on the left must be cautious. When I see sayings like "eat the rich" and ideas like "dictatorship of the proletariat", what I hear is strict father thinking. Demonizing one social group to elevate another is always a precursor to oppression. Even if we on the left "win" and get our way when it comes to political reforms, we must remember that the super-rich are still our fellow citizens. As with every group of people, some will support left-wing ideas and some will support right-wing ideas, but all of them are people, and they must be respected as such.

This isn't to say that Marxism is worthless. On the contrary; I accept Marx and Engels's critiques of nineteenth century capitalism, which I take as warnings of what could happen again. They also started an important discussion of economic inequality and its effects on society, and some of their observations are still relevant today. However, that's about as far as I can go. I believe that most of Marx's economic, political and philosophical ideas have since been eclipsed by better ideas (some of which I will discuss in later posts).

#democratic socialism #libertarian socialism #strict father morality #nurturant parent morality #george lakoff #marxism #authoritarianism #democrats #republicans #feminism #anti-racism #green party #progressivism #bigotry #oppression #socialism #eat the rich

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winsonquan · 5 years

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Week 03 - Something Awesome Blog

Karl Marx And Communism

Before we delve into the social engineering of prominent figures like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, we explore the ideologies of Karl Marx and “The Communist Manifesto” which is one of the word’s most influential political documents as it is still prevalent in today’s society.

Karl Marx is famous for his theories about capitalism and communism which resulted in his methodology of “Marxism” which analyzes and critiques the development of class society and capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic economic, social and political change. Marxist theory states that in capitalist societies, class conflicts arise due to the contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat (working class) that produce the goods and services and the bourgeoisie (ruling class) that owns the means of production and extract its wealth produced by the proletariat.

The class struggle is expressed as the revolt of a society’s productive forces against its relations of production which will culminate into a proletarian revolution which if successful will result in socialism. A socioeconomic system based on the social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one’s contribution and production organized directly for use. Marx’s stats that socialism would ultimately lead to a communist society which is a classless, stateless, humane society based on the underlying principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. This movement is accurately portrayed in the 1927 film “Metropolis”.

Exploring the “Communist Manifesto” we can see that Marx annotates that for a revolution to work there must be the abolition of property and inheritance, whilst the centralization of credit, communication and transport into the hands of the state. Inherently, if this is relied on the state to execute such actions, then automatically there will be a disparity in the possession of power between the state and the working people. In a nut shell, this can be concluded as “The State Owns and Controls Everything”.

Whilst, Karl Marx’s ideologies were theories based on the perception of society, he lacked analytical data to prove his theories. The first person to model Marx’s theories and put in action a model which would be later used for dictators around the world. Vladimir Lenin’s Russia, the Soviet Union would become the initial driving force of such a notion.

Whilst Marx’s attempts to bring equality to the working class and reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, the means to achieve this can be expressed by what he said; “They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. We can view social conditions as ideologies/items that make us who we are along with laws that maintain equality and order, such as: Family, Personal Possession, Freedom, Democracy and Religion. However, it is not possible for every single person to give up all their liberties and possessions, voluntarily, thus in order to achieve a Marxist State it requires brute force and execution of those who are unwilling in order to create fear.

Looking at history, we can see that historical individuals like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, The Kim Family in North Korea, Castros in Cuba and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Some individuals sparked a movement amongst the working class resulting in a revolution which attempted to overthrow a government. However, once a governing body has been demolished, a power gap is left when the dust settles and in order to have order in a society there must be somebody to lead society. Generally, the individual who started the revolution assumes the role as next leader. However, this results in the new leader amassing all the control and power left behind from the previous governing body and the famous quote by Lord Acton, that “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” as the new leader will act out of self-interest and greed rather than having the people’s best interest in mind.

Karl Marx’s has always been an advocate for the working class which make up majority of society, thus giving people a voice that can be heard by those of a high social status. His interests lie in benefitting the working class by raising working conditions and wages, by promoting such movements he has been expelled from many countries like Germany, France and Belgium. By addressing the exploitation used by the upper class to extract as much wealth as possible by the working class. Whilst Marx’s theories were simply words written on paper and lacking data to accurately prove his theories right at his time. However, in today’s society we can see the repercussions of Marx’s theories and the process it requires for a country to become a Marxist State. Looking back at Marx’s theories we can see that they aren’t simply words on paper but a process used by people to obtain power by exploiting the weaknesses amongst the working class and using them for their own self-interest.

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archiveofprolbems · 6 years

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The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur by William Deresiewicz

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it?

Pronounce the word artist, to conjure up the image of a solitary genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the numinous. “He’s an artist,” we’ll say in tones of reverence about an actor or musician or director. “A true artist,” we’ll solemnly proclaim our favorite singer or photographer, meaning someone who appears to dwell upon a higher plane. Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word.

Yet the notion of the artist as a solitary genius—so potent a cultural force, so determinative, still, of the way we think of creativity in general—is decades out of date. So out of date, in fact, that the model that replaced it is itself already out of date. A new paradigm is emerging, and has been since about the turn of the millennium, one that’s in the process of reshaping what artists are: how they work, train, trade, collaborate, think of themselves and are thought of—even what art is—just as the solitary-genius model did two centuries ago. The new paradigm may finally destroy the very notion of “art” as such—that sacred spiritual substance—which the older one created.

Before we thought of artists as geniuses, we thought of them as artisans. The words, by no coincidence, are virtually the same. Art itself derives from a root that means to “join” or “fit together”—that is, to make or craft, a sense that survives in phrases like the art of cooking and words like artful, in the sense of “crafty.” We may think of Bach as a genius, but he thought of himself as an artisan, a maker. Shakespeare wasn’t an artist, he was a poet, a denotation that is rooted in another word for make. He was also a playwright, a term worth pausing over. A playwright isn’t someone who writes plays; he is someone who fashions them, like a wheelwright or shipwright.

A whole constellation of ideas and practices accompanied this conception. Artists served apprenticeships, like other craftsmen, to learn the customary methods (hence the attributions one sees in museums: “workshop of Bellini” or “studio of Rembrandt”). Creativity was prized, but credibility and value derived, above all, from tradition. In a world still governed by a fairly rigid social structure, artists were grouped with the other artisans, somewhere in the middle or lower middle, below the merchants, let alone the aristocracy. Individual practitioners could come to be esteemed—think of the Dutch masters—but they were, precisely, masters, as in master craftsmen. The distinction between art and craft, in short, was weak at best. Indeed, the very concept of art as it was later understood—of Art—did not exist.

All of this began to change in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the period associated with Romanticism: the age of Rousseau, Goethe, Blake, and Beethoven, the age that taught itself to value not only individualism and originality but also rebellion and youth. Now it was desirable and even glamorous to break the rules and overthrow tradition—to reject society and blaze your own path. The age of revolution, it was also the age of secularization. As traditional belief became discredited, at least among the educated class, the arts emerged as the basis of a new creed, the place where people turned to put themselves in touch with higher truths.

Art rose to its zenith of spiritual prestige, and the artist rose along with it. The artisan became the genius: solitary, like a holy man; inspired, like a prophet; in touch with the unseen, his consciousness bulging into the future. “The priest departs,” said Whitman, “the divine literatus comes.” Art disentangled itself from craft; the term fine arts, “those which appeal to the mind and the imagination,” was first recorded in 1767.

“Art” became a unitary concept, incorporating music, theater, and literature as well as the visual arts, but also, in a sense, distinct from each, a kind of higher essence available for philosophical speculation and cultural veneration. “Art for art’s sake,” the aestheticist slogan, dates from the early 19th century. So does Gesamtkunstwerk, the dream or ideal, so precious to Wagner, of the “total work of art.” By the modernist moment, a century later, the age of Picasso, Joyce, and Stravinsky, the artist stood at the pinnacle of status, too, a cultural aristocrat with whom the old aristocrats—or at any rate the most advanced among them—wanted nothing more than to associate.

It is hardly any wonder that the image of the artist as a solitary genius—so noble, so enviable, so pleasant an object of aspiration and projection—has kept its hold on the collective imagination. Yet it was already obsolescent more than half a century ago. After World War II in particular, and in America especially, art, like all religions as they age, became institutionalized. We were the new superpower; we wanted to be a cultural superpower as well. We founded museums, opera houses, ballet companies, all in unprecedented numbers: the so-called culture boom. Arts councils, funding bodies, educational programs, residencies, magazines, awards—an entire bureaucratic apparatus.

As art was institutionalized, so, inevitably, was the artist. The genius became the professional. Now you didn’t go off to Paris and hole up in a garret to produce your masterpiece, your Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or Ulysses, and wait for the world to catch up with you. Like a doctor or lawyer, you went to graduate school—M.F.A. programs were also proliferating—and then tried to find a position. That often meant a job, typically at a college or university—writers in English departments, painters in art schools (higher ed was also booming)—but it sometimes simply meant an affiliation, as with an orchestra or theater troupe. Saul Bellow went to Paris in 1948, where he began The Adventures of Augie March, but he went on a Guggenheim grant, and he came from an assistant professorship.

The training was professional, and so was the work it produced. Expertise—or, in the mantra of the graduate programs, “technique”—not inspiration or tradition, became the currency of aesthetic authority. The artist-as-genius could sometimes pretend that his work was tossed off in a sacred frenzy, but no self-respecting artist-as-professional could afford to do likewise. They had to be seen to be working, and working hard (the badge of professional virtue), and it helped if they could explain to laypeople—deans, donors, journalists—what it was that they were doing.

The artist’s progress, in the postwar model, was also professional. You didn’t burst from obscurity to celebrity with a single astonishing work. You slowly climbed the ranks. You accumulated credentials. You amassed a résumé. You sat on the boards and committees, collected your prizes and fellowships. It was safer than the solitary-genius thing, but it was also a lot less exciting, and it is no surprise that artists were much less apt to be regarded now as sages or priests, much more likely to be seen as just another set of knowledge workers. Spiritual aristocracy was sacrificed for solid socioeconomic upper-middle-class-ness.

Artisan, genius, professional: underlying all these models is the market. In blunter terms, they’re all about the way that you get paid. If the artisanal paradigm predates the emergence of modern capitalism—the age of the artisan was the age of the patron, with the artist as, essentially, a sort of feudal dependent—the paradigms of genius and professional were stages in the effort to adjust to it.

In the former case, the object was to avoid the market and its sullying entanglements, or at least to appear to do so. Spirit stands opposed to flesh, to filthy lucre. Selling was selling out. Artists, like their churchly forebears, were meant to be unworldly. Some, like Picasso and Rilke, had patrons, but under very different terms than did the artisans, since the privilege was weighted in the artist’s favor now, leaving many fewer strings attached. Some, like Proust and Elizabeth Bishop, had money to begin with. And some, like Joyce and van Gogh, did the most prestigious thing and starved—which also often meant sponging, extracting gifts or “loans” from family or friends that amounted to a kind of sacerdotal tax, equivalent to the tithes exacted by priests or alms relied upon by monks.

Professionalism represents a compromise formation, midway between the sacred and the secular. A profession is not a vocation, in the older sense of a “calling,” but it also isn’t just a job; something of the priestly clings to it. Against the values of the market, the artist, like other professionals, maintained a countervailing set of standards and ideals—beauty, rigor, truth—inherited from the previous paradigm. Institutions served to mediate the difference, to cushion artists, ideologically, economically, and psychologically, from the full force of the marketplace.

Some artists did enter the market, of course, especially those who worked in the “low” or “popular” forms. But even they had mediating figures—publishing companies, movie studios, record labels; agents, managers, publicists, editors, producers—who served to shield creators from the market’s logic. Corporations functioned as a screen; someone else, at least, was paid to think about the numbers. Publishers or labels also sometimes played an actively benevolent role: funding the rest of the list with a few big hits, floating promising beginners while their talent had a chance to blossom, even subsidizing the entire enterprise, as James Laughlin did for years at New Directions.

There were overlaps, of course, between the different paradigms—long transitions, mixed and marginal cases, anticipations and survivals. The professional model remains the predominant one. But we have entered, unmistakably, a new transition, and it is marked by the final triumph of the market and its values, the removal of the last vestiges of protection and mediation. In the arts, as throughout the middle class, the professional is giving way to the entrepreneur, or, more precisely, the “entrepreneur”: the “self-employed” (that sneaky oxymoron), the entrepreneurial self.

The institutions that have undergirded the existing system are contracting or disintegrating. Professors are becoming adjuncts. Employees are becoming independent contractors (or unpaid interns). Everyone is in a budget squeeze: downsizing, outsourcing, merging, or collapsing. Now we’re all supposed to be our own boss, our own business: our own agent; our own label; our own marketing, production, and accounting departments. Entrepreneurialism is being sold to us as an opportunity. It is, by and large, a necessity. Everybody understands by now that nobody can count on a job.

Still, it also is an opportunity. The push of institutional disintegration has coincided with the pull of new technology. The emerging culture of creative entrepreneurship predates the Web—its roots go back to the 1960s—but the Web has brought it an unprecedented salience. The Internet enables you to promote, sell, and deliver directly to the user, and to do so in ways that allow you to compete with corporations and institutions, which previously had a virtual monopoly on marketing and distribution. You can reach potential customers at a speed and on a scale that would have been unthinkable when pretty much the only means were word of mouth, the alternative press, and stapling handbills to telephone poles.

Everybody gets this: every writer, artist, and musician with a Web site (that is, every writer, artist, and musician). Bands hawk their CDs online. Documentarians take to Kickstarter to raise money for their projects. The comedian Louis CK, selling unprotected downloads of his stand-up show, has tested a nascent distribution model. “Just get your name out there,” creative types are told. There seems to be a lot of building going on: you’re supposed to build your brand, your network, your social-media presence. Creative entrepreneurship is spawning its own institutional structure—online marketplaces, self-publishing platforms, nonprofit incubators, collaborative spaces—but the fundamental relationship remains creator-to-customer, with creators handling or superintending every aspect of the transaction.

So what will all this mean for artists and for art? For training, for practice, for the shape of the artistic career, for the nature of the artistic community, for the way that artists see themselves and are seen by the public, for the standards by which art is judged and the terms by which it is defined? These are new questions, open questions, questions no one is equipped as yet to answer. But it’s not too early to offer a few preliminary observations.

Creative entrepreneurship, to start with what is most apparent, is far more interactive, at least in terms of how we understand the word today, than the model of the artist-as-genius, turning his back on the world, and even than the model of the artist as professional, operating within a relatively small and stable set of relationships. The operative concept today is the network, along with the verb that goes with it, networking. A Gen‑X graphic-artist friend has told me that the young designers she meets are no longer interested in putting in their 10,000 hours. One reason may be that they recognize that 10,000 hours is less important now than 10,000 contacts.

A network, I should note, is not the same as what used to be known as a circle—or, to use a term important to the modernists, a coterie. The truth is that the geniuses weren’t really quite as solitary as advertised. They also often came together—think of the Bloomsbury Group—in situations of intense, sustained creative ferment. With the coterie or circle as a social form, from its conversations and incitements, came the movement as an intellectual product: impressionism, imagism, futurism.

But the network is a far more diffuse phenomenon, and the connections that it typically entails are far less robust. A few days here, a project there, a correspondence over e‑mail. A contact is not a collaborator. Coleridge, for Wordsworth, was not a contact; he was a partner, a comrade, a second self. It is hard to imagine that kind of relationship, cultivated over countless uninterrupted encounters, developing in the age of the network. What kinds of relationships will develop, and what they will give rise to, remains to be seen.

No longer interested in putting in their 10,000 hours: under all three of the old models, an artist was someone who did one thing—who trained intensively in one discipline, one tradition, one set of tools, and who worked to develop one artistic identity. You were a writer, or a painter, or a choreographer. It is hard to think of very many figures who achieved distinction in more than one genre—fiction and poetry, say—let alone in more than one art. Few even attempted the latter (Gertrude Stein admonished Picasso for trying to write poems), and almost never with any success.

But one of the most conspicuous things about today’s young creators is their tendency to construct a multiplicity of artistic identities. You’re a musician anda photographer and a poet; a storyteller and a dancer and a designer—a multiplatform artist, in the term one sometimes sees. Which means that you haven’t got time for your 10,000 hours in any of your chosen media. But technique or expertise is not the point. The point is versatility. Like any good business, you try to diversify.

What we see in the new paradigm—in both the artist’s external relationships and her internal creative capacity—is what we see throughout the culture: the displacement of depth by breadth. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No doubt some of both, in a ratio that’s yet to be revealed. What seems more clear is that the new paradigm is going to reshape the way that artists are trained. One recently established M.F.A. program in Portland, Oregon, is conducted under the rubric of “applied craft and design.” Students, drawn from a range of disciplines, study entrepreneurship as well as creative practice. Making, the program recognizes, is now intertwined with selling, and artists need to train in both—a fact reflected in the proliferation of dual M.B.A./M.F.A. programs.

The new paradigm is also likely to alter the shape of the ensuing career. Just as everyone, we’re told, will have five or six jobs, in five or six fields, during the course of their working life, so will the career of the multiplatform, entrepreneurial artist be more vagrant and less cumulative than under the previous models. No climactic masterwork of deep maturity, no King Lear or Faust, but rather many shifting interests and directions as the winds of market forces blow you here or there.

Works of art, more centrally and nakedly than ever before, are becoming commodities, consumer goods. Jeff Bezos, as a patron, is a very different beast than James Laughlin. Now it’s every man for himself, every tub on its own bottom. Now it’s not an audience you think of addressing; it’s a customer base. Now you’re only as good as your last sales quarter.

It’s hard to believe that the new arrangement will not favor work that’s safer: more familiar, formulaic, user-friendly, eager to please—more like entertainment, less like art. Artists will inevitably spend a lot more time looking over their shoulder, trying to figure out what the customer wants rather than what they themselves are seeking to say. The nature of aesthetic judgment will itself be reconfigured. “No more gatekeepers,” goes the slogan of the Internet apostles. Everyone’s opinion, as expressed in Amazon reviews and suchlike, carries equal weight—the democratization of taste.

Judgment rested with the patron, in the age of the artisan. In the age of the professional, it rested with the critic, a professionalized aesthete or intellectual. In the age of the genius, which was also the age of avant-gardes, of tremendous experimental energy across the arts, it largely rested with artists themselves. “Every great and original writer,” Wordsworth said, “must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.”

But now we have come to the age of the customer, who perforce is always right. Or as a certain legendary entertainer is supposed to have put it, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Another word for gatekeepers is experts. Lord knows they have their problems, beginning with arrogance, but there is one thing you can say for them: they’re not quite so easily fooled. When the Modern Library asked its editorial board to select the 100 best novels of the 20th century, the top choice was Ulysses. In a companion poll of readers, it was Atlas Shrugged. We recognize, when it comes to food (the new summit of cultural esteem), that taste must be developed by a long exposure, aided by the guidance of practitioners and critics. About the arts we own to no such modesties. Prizes belong to the age of professionals. All we’ll need to measure merit soon is the best-seller list.

The democratization of taste, abetted by the Web, coincides with the democratization of creativity. The makers have the means to sell, but everybody has the means to make. And everybody’s using them. Everybody seems to fancy himself a writer, a musician, a visual artist. Apple figured this out a long time ago: that the best way to sell us its expensive tools is to convince us that we all have something unique and urgent to express.

“Producerism,” we can call this, by analogy with consumerism. What we’re now persuaded to consume, most conspicuously, are the means to create. And the democratization of taste ensures that no one has the right (or inclination) to tell us when our work is bad. A universal grade inflation now obtains: we’re all swapping A-minuses all the time, or, in the language of Facebook, “likes.”

It is often said today that the most-successful businesses are those that create experiences rather than products, or create experiences (environments, relationships) around their products. So we might also say that under producerism, in the age of creative entrepreneurship, producing becomes an experience, even the experience. It becomes a lifestyle, something that is packaged as an experience—and an experience, what’s more, after the contemporary fashion: networked, curated, publicized, fetishized, tweeted, catered, and anything but solitary, anything but private.

Among the most notable things about those Web sites that creators now all feel compelled to have is that they tend to present not only the work, not only the creator (which is interesting enough as a cultural fact), but also the creator’s life or lifestyle or process. The customer is being sold, or at least sold on or sold through, a vicarious experience of production.

Creator: I’m not sure that artist even makes sense as a term anymore, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it giving way before the former, with its more generic meaning and its connection to that contemporary holy word, creative. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Powers of Two, last summer’s modish book on creativity, puts Lennon and McCartney with Jobs and Wozniak. A recent cover of this very magazine touted “Case Studies in Eureka Moments,” a list that started with Hemingway and ended with Taco Bell.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/

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zipgrowth · 6 years

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Higher Ed’s Biggest Pressure Cookers in 2019

Last year my colleagues at Entangled Solutions offered their predictions for what would unfold in higher education in 2018. We talked about financial challenges facing schools, mergers and closures, cutting-edge technology, personalization and more.

So how did their predictions fare? And what do they foresee for 2019? Here’s what Paul Freedman, Terah Crews, Jeff Selingo and Mike Berlin had to say.

What are the three topics or trends that will dominate higher education in 2019?

Terah Crews: 1) Mega-philanthropy. Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins was only the beginning. We will continue to see game-changing mega-gifts, assuming we don’t go into full recession, that could change institutions for generations to come. The question is will we see the establishment of another elite university—or an elite for the 21st century. Stanford, Vanderbilt and Duke, while fixtures of higher education today, trace their roots to mega-donors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Will we get another in the early years of the 21st century?

2) Bricks and clicks. With over 30 percent of students taking at least one course online, look to colleges and universities creating a more seamless experience between online and in-person. Traditional universities with limited facilities for growth will look to make it easy for students to take at least one class online to free up space for enrollment growth. The question is when, not whether, we will see online colleges follow suit and establish small in-person footprints to attract students in regions they consider strategic for growth—think Amazon 4-Star stores.

3) Consolidation and radical collaboration among small colleges, particularly those in the Midwest and Northeast. The demographic destiny here looks foreboding. With a disappearing middle class and high school enrollment declines, small colleges will increasingly seek to survive and reduce costs through radical collaboration or consolidation. The question is when we will see large universities become active buyers in states like Texas and California to gain better access to growing markets.

Jeff Selingo: 1) Finances are going to be big, both at big public universities continuing to face headwinds in states given where public funding is going, but also not well-endowed tuition dependent colleges and universities.

2) Student learning and outcomes. Obviously there’s been a big focus on student success, meaning retention and graduation. But now there will be a focus on what do students actually know and how are they applying that after college.

3) Equity and inclusion. Specifically, how do we deal with new demographics coming into higher education who not only look different from who higher education has traditionally served in the past—and different from the faculty teaching them—but also in terms of socioeconomic status?

Mike Berlin: 1) The year ended with two big deals in the OPM space: Wiley’s acquisition of Learning House and Grand Canyon’s acquisition of Orbis. The OPM market will continue to see this type of activity with consolidation and new entrants changing the dynamics of the market.

2) The educational philanthropy space is beginning to have more conversations about learn-work interoperability and opportunity pathways. In 2019 we will see significant investment and hopefully innovation in this sector.

3) California Community College’s new online community college will successfully launch and serve as a model for system-level innovation in other states.

Revisiting your predictions about the most strategic consideration for colleges in 2018, each of you said some variation of financial sustainability would be critical. How did that play out and what should we expect for 2019?

Paul Freedman: As predicted, we saw a number of closures and further downgrading of the debt of universities and larger indications that financial pressures are real and, if anything, growing. That will trend will continue to be exacerbated by the Trump effect on international applications, which was a source of sustainability for some institutions. It’s only going to be made worse in coming years because of student demographics, which are not favorable for traditional-aged college students.

Berlin: Although college M&A [merger and acquisition] activity did not reach a tipping point, the underlying conditions that will lead to consolidation and other forms of radical consolidation have continued. This is just a question of when, and not if.

Crews: Most struggling institutions are still limping along rather than closing doors and merging. We did hear that there was an uptick in expressed interest in mergers last year.

Selingo: It hasn’t changed. No one has figured out what is the new model for higher education. We continue to discount tuition at unsustainable levels, we continue to look for revenue that doesn’t really exist at the levels we need it to, and we refuse to cut costs. Until a university or college is willing to do something that is bold and different, financial sustainability is going to continue to be an issue.

You each said that partnerships would be the most important innovative practice in higher education in 2018. How did that evolve and what do you foresee for partnerships in 2019?

Crews: Corporate partnerships did see an uptick last year as more and more of the education ecosystem explores career and technical education. Look to more Facebook/Pathstream-like partnerships in 2019. Mega-universities will look to corporate partnerships and skill-based unaccredited programs to future-proof against projected flattened enrollment growth. States, as in California’s new online community college, will place increased focus on underserved markets by developing corporate partnership backed skill-based education programs.

Selingo: I think we’re seeing that. In 2018, Make School and Dominican University partnered to create new computer science programs. Hampshire College is now asking for a strategic partner. We see a number of other partnerships happening in the arena, and so I still think that partnerships are the precursors to mergers and acquisitions or simply going out of business in higher education.

Freedman: That prediction was pretty solid. You see the prominence of collaborations like the University Innovation Alliance to spread innovations across institutions. APLU [Association of Public and Land-grant Universities] created a similar structure to do the same. You also see partnerships between institutions and companies. A number of companies, including, Walmart, Lowes and Disney, have announced partnerships with universities..

What do you see as the most important technological development in higher education in 2019, and how do you rate your 2018 prediction?

Freedman (2018 prediction: augmented and virtual reality): I’m not perfect. Not all my predictions came true. VR and AR didn’t make the gains that I expected. The actual killer app in that space is haptic gloves. This space really depends on muscle memory in the learning equation. It’s easy to produce high quality content for VR or AR, but you have to create the tools to replicate the haptic experience. The revolution in higher ed will wait for that device set.

In 2019, interoperability for open education resources (OER) is going to be the big technological opportunity. Given the continued momentum with general-ed courses using OER, the question will be what that allows. What technology can you plug into OER, and what does that mean for investments in upper-division and specialty courses where there is no OER ecosystem? OER is here to stay, and 2019 will be around what its presence enables.

Selingo (2018 prediction: personalization in courses and curriculum that starts to bend the cost curve): I don’t think personalization, at least in courseware, really resulted in much in 2018. Probably where personalization is helping already is around student success and advising. We see it with chatbots, for example at Georgia State. Because professors control so much of classroom, it’s hard to personalize that experience as of yet. Perhaps if we see movement on the student success side of things—so personalizing course catalog in some ways—it could perhaps lead to personalization in the classroom. I think 2019 will be around personalization on the student success side.

Crews (2018 prediction: active learning technologies): After 2018, I’ve grown bearish on new technology driving change. It is not that great new technology isn’t being developed, it is that our dated operating and business processes are throttling most of the benefit we might gain from these technologies. It is like being a Porsche and then putting a speed limiter on it that prevents you from driving faster than 35 mph.

It is time to take a hard look at our institutional systems and processes. We have been too scared for too long that any changes would undermine the core principles that make American academia great. That doesn’t have to be the case. We can improve how we operate while protecting the best of us. One way to start? Reimagine the decision-making process at institutions to reduce risk, contain costs, and increase experimentation while remaining democratic.

Berlin (2018 prediction: OER): I think OER-based content solutions have reached critical mass, especially in introductory disciplines. This, coupled with new economic models and inclusive access, have created the conditions for significant change in the publishing market.

Last question: How much consolidation—closures as well as mergers and acquisitions—do you foresee in 2019?

Berlin: I think this year we will see a moderate number of mergers. 12, or one a month.

Crews: We are still in the early years of consolidation. I predict we will see a minor uptick, but by and large buy-side schools and sell-side schools are going to only dip their toes in the water until there is more urgency or until they see more examples of successful mergers that provide a roadmap for success. Look to schools acquiring nonprofits, like the SNHU and LRNG merger, as a lower-risk, less regulation way to grow.

Freedman: I think double what we saw in 2018.

Selingo: We will probably see a lot more than I would have expected even a couple months ago. I’m really starting to worry about the broader economy. We’re starting to see a broader slowdown in the economy, a downtown in the stock market. These larger economic measures, which have been positive for so many years since the Great Recession, are moving in the wrong direction at the same time that colleges have still not found that sustainable model. Those two things combined will lead to more closures.

Higher Ed’s Biggest Pressure Cookers in 2019 published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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socialattractionuk · 6 years

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Poorer couples could save their relationship by giving eachother the silent treatment, study finds

(Picture: Getty)

New research has found that giving your partner the silent treatment could actually keep your relationship going.

Yes, simply ignoring them instead of arguing could extend your time together. Who knew.

Also known as the ‘cold shoulder’, the silent treatment has previously been linked to less intimacy and poorer health.

But now, the first study of its kind has found that it can actually work – but only depending on how much you earn.

Ignoring a spouse’s demands is likely to be the best policy for those on a lower-income.

But the controversial tactic backfires among those on higher salaries, say psychologists.

Lead author Jaclyn Ross, of California University in Los Angeles, explained: ‘Consider this example:

(Picture: Getty)

‘A wife requests her husband ask for a raise at work. For a husband in a low-wage job with less job security, that is a risky proposition.

‘By showing reluctance to ask for the raise, he can preserve his self-esteem and lessen emphasis on the couple’s vulnerable financial situation.

‘For a wealthier couple in the same situation, the wife may perceive the husband is unwilling to make a sacrifice for his family and that can cause friction in the relationship.’

Dubbed ‘demand-withdraw’ behaviour, it has been documented by clinicians since the 1930s – but only recently researched.

It’s been found to be one of the most frequently used responses to conflict in romances – and a major cause of divorce.

But the US team say the classic ‘relationship stalemate’ when a partner shuts down at being asked to do something is much more complicated than previously believed.

Graduate student Ms Ross and colleagues said previous studies on the phenomenon have focused almost exclusively on white middle class couples.

They came up with conflicting results suggesting the common behaviour could be harmful – or helpful.

So the latest published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology included more racially and ethnically diverse participants – and analysed their socioeconomic status.

(Picture: Getty)

It found giving the silent treatment helped relationships stay stable for couples with less financial resources – and decline for those who were more affluent.

Interestingly, relationship satisfaction dropped for lower-income couples when the picked on spouse did not ‘exhibit strong withdrawal behaviours’.

Co-author Professor Thomas Bradbury said: ‘Even though it’s easier for wealthier couples to access resources to address their relationship problems, it can also create higher expectations that partners will make accommodations for one another’s demands and needs that underlie their problems.

‘But if those expectations are not met, rifts can occur in the relationship and exacerbate the existing problems.’

As in earlier studies it focused on the wife giving the demand – and the husband being the one to withdraw.

Examples of the behaviour included the wives being hostile, dominating, threatening or blaming – while their husbands avoided the confrontation.

To get these findings, the researchers conducted two experiments.

The first followed 515 couples with at least one child or one on the way for 18 months, four-in-ten of which were below the poverty line.

They were visited in their homes and asked to engage in a series of discussions about something each partner wanted to change about themselves – as well as a topic of disagreement.

The second recruited 414 newlywed couples who were asked to do the same.

They were seen four times over 27 months.

(Picture: Getty)

Again the disadvantaged volunteers experienced more dissatisfaction when the husbands displayed lower withdrawal in the face of the wives’ demands.

But it was not as robust this time – possibly because they had only just got hitched whereas the others had been married for an average of five years.

She said the study highlights the importance of using diverse samples in research on couples because results can vary based on differing life circumstances.

The results could benefit counsellors who work with couples in therapy and policymakers focused on marriage and family.

Jaclyn said: ‘Life circumstances may matter for relationships far more than we think – so much so that these circumstances appear to moderate the effects of communication on how happy we are in our partnerships.

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‘Creating safe and secure environments helps to allow partners to relate well to each other and to their children, giving more people the kinds of relationships and families that will keep them healthy and happy.’

Of course, giving the silent treatment to sort out your differences shouldn’t be your first port of call.

And, previous research has suggested that people who resort to it are more prone to anxiety and aggression, with it being the most common pattern of conflict in marriage or in any committed, established romantic relationship.

This could also lead to psychological issues that ultimately develop into physical ones such as urinary, bowel and erectile dysfunction.

Psychologists call it the demand-withdraw pattern which happens when one partner makes constant requests of the other and is met with frequent repudiation.

Typically, the way the refusing partner expresses their denial is by ignoring their partner – which is of course what is known as the silent treatment.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female – as another study based on more than 14,000 people found the damage remained the same.

However, it was found that women are more likely than men to be the demanders when it comes to the silent treatment.

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fathersonholygore · 6 years

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Street Trash. 1987. Directed by Jim Muro. Screenplay by Roy Frumkes. Starring Mike Lackey, Bill Chepil, Vic Noto, Mark Sferrazza, Jane Arakawa, Nicole Potter, Pat Ryan, Clarenze Jarmon, Bernard Perlman, Miriam Zucker, M. D’Jango Krunch, Bruce Torbet, & James Lorinz. Street Trash Joint Venture Rated R. 101 minutes. Comedy/Horror

★★★ Roll those eyes all you want— we’re digging into Jim Muro’s 1987 shlockfest of gore + weird, Street Trash! For all its trashiness, there’s decent socioeconomic commentary buried in this seemingly pointless story. After the 1970s, New York City couldn’t get any worse. Although things weren’t much better in the ’80s. Still lots of crime, corruption, and the homeless population kept growing. Along with little change in social conditions, the attitudes towards social issues and those affected by them hadn’t changed much, either. Homelessness, even today, is demonised, let alone back in the late ’80s. Many were unsympathetic towards the plight of those who had to sleep on the street, least of which certainly weren’t capitalists. This is basically the crux of Street Trash— the homeless are disregarded except when it comes to any way a business/organisation can capitalise on their existence, thus the nasty booze Viper is unloaded onto street alcoholics, whose organs liquefy after just one drink. We see a homeless community already divided by mental illness, alcoholism, and other issues, only further disrupted by the deadly Viper. A ridiculous B-movie, yes. Not without its charms, nor its smarts. Immediately we’re introduced to the urban and social decay of NYC. The urban area of the city is full of the homeless, cheque cashing places attached directly to liquor stores where our greedy society has conveniently placed the two business, among other landmarks typical of deteriorated areas. Already we see the tell-tale signs of exploitation of the working/lower classes. All the city’s most vulnerable are taken advantage of by destructive businesses. Low prices, in a capitalist economy, are often indicative of what’s destructive or unhealthy, such as how cheap food is, more often than not, so much worse than overpriced healthy food. In comes Viper! A sleazy liquor store owner wants to make a quick buck, so he shells out a bunch of unknown booze for financial gain. A massive negative to urbanism. Along with addictions and mental health issues, urban areas are unfortunately plagued by senseless violence. It’s usually brought about/perpetuated by the conditions in which they’re forced to live. Like in Street Trash, the lowest classes get turned against one another. A hierarchy exists between the regular homeless and Bronson (Vic Noto), a self-imposed leader amongst the community. He’s also a damaged, forgotten Vietnam veteran. The character of Bronson brings an entirely new perspective into the story. Just his presence and the terrifying nature of psychopathy is an indictment of how imperialist America – driven by greed+war – can’t even taken care of its own veterans with all their money. He’s left to deteriorate mentally until he becomes a danger to himself and everyone else around him, ruling the homeless with an iron fist. Instead of being given help he’s chased down by police. Worst of all, in retrospect, it hasn’t gotten any better. Only today, conservatives try blaming it on immigration instead of the fact they’re simply failing their own citizens, or, y’know, actively refusing to do anything for them— to-ma-to, to-mah-to.

“That’s ’cause you boys haven’t learned to shop frugal.”

Perhaps the best part of Street Trash is the function of all the gory, gooey, grisly decomposition occurring after the homeless sip on the Viper liquor. They literally become waste— symbolic of how they’re treated by a society who couldn’t care any less about the underlying issues of their homelessness, only how their homelessness creates trouble for society. Like the decaying urban environment around them, the homeless community – via Viper’s devastating effects – deteriorate physically becoming part of the junkyard wasteland in which they live. Similar to how homelessness removes the barrier of interior v. exterior – demarcating space/place – their bodies transform into a part of the landscape of waste itself, no longer bodies but junk in the yard. The best instance is the 1st Viper death. Muro frames the gruesome death of this man with shots of ruined buildings, shattered glass everywhere, fields of debris and various junk. As the homeless man melts his cries are absorbed in the silence of a ruined, forgotten area of the city far removed from the boundaries of so-called civilised parts of the city. The cherry on top: he melts into a non-working toilet. Usually, a toilet’s function is to carry away waste, taking unclean, abject things we don’t want to think of/deal with and moves it somewhere deemed acceptable. Problem is, this toilet’s just a shell, porcelain bones sitting amongst other unusable things, including humans seen as broken/not fixable, and so the waste – the liquefied homeless man – only remains in the wasteland. A tragic cycle of destruction. A wasteland of capitalist failure(s). In its own unique and hideous way, Street Trash has a whole lot of things to say about society, its treatment of the homeless and the lower classes, as well as the way in which a filthy rich capitalist society such as the USA ignores its veterans while banging on the war drum all but constantly, decade after decade. The city, here, is a treacherous, unforgiving, trash-filled landscape, a heap of discarded, forgotten bodies and metal and rubble. Not to say Muro and screenwriter Roy Frumkes were aiming at anything lofty with their material other than trying hard to be gross + wild. Neither does it mean the movie can’t succeed on both levels. Critical theory is all about how the viewer interprets a movie. It doesn’t matter about intent. It matters how the audience infers what’s being said by the movie itself, not its makers. Just as easy to sit back, let this ’80s classic of trashy horror thrill you with nonsense! Nobody has to take it so seriously. But in a day and age where people want to discount horror as a genre when they think certain modern movies are ‘advancing the genre’ by suddenly being focused on social issues, it’s worth noting how even the seemingly shittiest little horrors can provide us with food for thought. Father Gore would rather look for gold in the turds instead of tearing down an entire genre. Ultimately, a movie like Street Trash proves genre cinema can be so much more than only a good, fun time— in genre, there’s power.

The Horrors of Homelessness in STREET TRASH Street Trash. 1987. Directed by Jim Muro. Screenplay by Roy Frumkes. Starring Mike Lackey, Bill Chepil, Vic Noto, Mark Sferrazza, Jane Arakawa, Nicole Potter, Pat Ryan, Clarenze Jarmon, Bernard Perlman, Miriam Zucker, M.

#Alcoholism #Capitalism #Gore #Homeless Community #Imperialism #Lower class #Ruins #Social Commentary #Social Decay #Social issues #Street Trash #Urban Decay #Urbanism #Vietnam Veteran

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edivupage · 6 years

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The "Debunking" of Hart & Risley and How We Use Science

The recent kerfuffle concerning Hart & Risley (1995) and the 30 million word gap offers an object lesson in science, the interpretation of science, and the relation of science and policy. Let’s start with the new science. Douglas Sperry and colleagues sought to replicate Hart & Risley, who reported the 30 million word gap—that’s the projected difference in total number of words directed to a child by caregivers when comparing children of parents on public assistance and children of parents in professional positions. Sperry and his team claim not to find a statistically reliable difference among parents of different social classes. Twitter was quick to pounce:

Coverage from NPR made it sound like Hart & Risley had been debunked, with the headline “Let’s stop talking about the 30 million word gap.” But the Sperry report doesn’t really upend Hart & Risley. First, Sperry et al. claim that the Hart & Risley finding has never been replicated. I am not sure what Sperry et al. mean by “replicate,” because the conceptual idea that socioeconomic status and volume of caregiver→child speech has been replicated. (The following list is not offered as complete—I stopped looking after I found five.) Gilkerson et al (2017) Hoff (2003) Hoff-Ginsbert (1998) Huttenlocher et al (2010) Rowe (2008) None of these is an exact replication---they have variations in methods, population, and analyses. The same is true of Sperry et al, and funnily enough that study has a fairly significant difference—they didn't include a group of professional parents which is key if your main concern is the size of the gap between professional and public assistance parents. It’s also worth noting that Sperry et al speculated that their results may be more representative of how parents actually talk, because the researchers used an unobtrusive recording system. Hart and Risley (and most other researchers) had a researcher observing parents and children, so perhaps parents in different SES groups reacted differently in the presence of researcher, the guess being that poor people might clam up, or the wealthier might show off by talking more. I'll leave alone the assumptions underlying that speculation, but I will point out that, first, I doubt observer effects would count for much because the observations occurred over the course of years; people get used to being observed. Second, Gilkerson et al (2017) used the same unobtrusive system that Sperry did and observed the association of SES and caregiver speech. Another odd thing about the Sperry et al paper is their emphasis on bystander speech (i.e., speech that is not directed to the child but happens in the child’s presence.) This is odd because multiple studies indicate that child *can* learn from such speech, but more often learn little or nothing (e.g., here and here). Sperry points out that in some cultures children are seldom addressed directly, yet learn to talk. But maybe children in those cultures learn “if someone’s talking, I should listen, even if it’s not addressed to me because they may say something that’s important to me.” In most households in the US, if you’re not being addressed it’s less likely that the speech is important to you, so the child likely does not redirect attention from whatever he or she was doing to the speech. So all in all, I don’t find think this failure to replicate overturns Hart & Risley, coming as it does in the face of several successful replications. As to whether the gap is 30 million or some other figure…I don’t know, maybe somebody thought the absolute value mattered. I doubt any psychologists did. We would care about the predictive power of the caregiver speech. On the whole, there’s still pretty good reason to think there’s an association between SES and child-directed speech from parents. (For more on this issue, see the recent blog by Roberta Golinkoff and her colleagues.) BUT thinking that there’s pretty good evidence for the association is not AT ALL the same as thinking it ought to influence policy. There are two issues here. First, do we understand this phenomenon well enough to intervene? Second, should we? In answer to “do we understand enough?” I’d say “no.” The volume of words is the variable you hear about most, but it may not be the most important. It may be the conversational back and forth that matters. Or the diversity of speech. Or the gestures that go with speech. And oral language is only one contributor to vocabulary size and syntactic complexity. Maybe we should intervene to get more parents reading to their children, or better, using dialogic reading strategies. At the very least, I’d like to see a small-scale intervention study (not just a correlational study) showing positive results of asking caregivers to talk their children more, before I would be ready to draw a strong conclusion that volume of caregiver talk is causal to children’s language capabilities. The second question—if we were pretty sure we knew that a factor is causal, should we intervene?—is much more fraught. As I have considered at length elsewhere, questions like this are outside of the realm of science. You’re contemplating using science, but whether or not to intervene is not a scientific question. It’s a question of values. You are seeking to change the world. That brings costs and the promise of benefits. Will it be worth it? It depends on what you value. That’s what people on Twitter were responding to on this issue (some explicitly, some, implicitly)—the assumption that parents in poverty ought to parent more like middle-class parents. Then their kids would be successful…according to middle class values. That conclusion entails the obvious corollary that parents can eliminate any disadvantage their child has, so if they don’t, well, it’s no one’s fault but their own. I agree with this argument to a point. The prospect of using science to tell people how to parent makes me very uneasy. On the other hand, should we fiercely defend parenting practices in the name of cultural equality or because we don’t want to let powerful institutions off the hook if we know those practices put children at a disadvantage in school, and later, in the job market? (Reminder, I don’t think that such evidence currently exists on parental speech volume.) Wealthy parents keep pace with what researchers suggest will help children flourish, and then defend the right of parents living in poverty to use parenting practices that put poor children at a disadvantage? In a long series of tweets (in which she raises many of the criticisms of the Sperry et al study that I raised above) Twitter user @kimmaytube closed with this pointed comment

What is the role of a scientist in these difficult application issues? For better or worse, I have come to what seems the obvious resolution: give people the fullest information you can and let them decide. People who are concerned about the impact of proposed applications of science will have on low-income communities and individuals raise valid points, which they sometimes undercut with rash claims about the invalidity of the scientific studies. I’ve seen this repeatedly on the subject of grit and self-control. Again, there are very legitimate questions to ask about the values that underlie the assumption that we should make kids more self-controlled and/or more gritty, and questions about the costs to children and institutions should we try to intervene that way. These are separate issues than questions about the scientific standing of grit and self-control as explanatory constructs. Twitter notwithstanding, I encourage you to bear the distinction in mind.

The "Debunking" of Hart & Risley and How We Use Science published first on https://sapsnkra.tumblr.com

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universalessays-blog · 7 years

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Social Theory and Sport Research Paper has been published on http://research.universalessays.com/sociology-research-paper/sociology-of-sport-research-paper/social-theory-and-sport-research-paper/

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Social Theory and Sport Research Paper

This sample Social Theory and Sport Research Paper is published for educational and informational purposes only. Like other free research paper examples it is not a custom research paper. If you need help with writing your assignment, please use research paper writing services and buy a research paper on any topic.

Abstract

Despite acknowledgments of sport as a legitimate focus of sociological analysis from early thinkers such as Spencer, Simmel, Weber, Scheler, and Mead (Luschen 1980), the lack of development in social theory and sport studies has been well documented (Frey & Eitzen 1991), although there appears to be increased movement toward the generation and integration of more theoretically driven work.

Outline

Introduction

Political Nature of Sport

Sport as Art

Moral Assumptions Embedded in Sport

Bibliography

Introduction

Washington and Karen (2001) point out that Bourdieu’s ‘‘Sports and Social Class’’ statement has focused much of our attention with these following key observations: (1) sports is a field relatively autonomous of society with a unique historical dynamic; (2) sport represents struggles between social classes; (3) sport shifted from an amateur elite practice to a profession ally produced spectacle for mass consumption; (4) sport production and administration must be understood within the industrial political economy; (5) sports participation as exercise or lei sure time depends on economic and cultural capital; and (6) sport practices vary by the conscious and unconscious meanings and functions perceived by various social classes.

Sport provides unique opportunities for understanding the complexities of everyday life. Bourdieu’s (1991) original argument calls for theoretical inquiry that integrates macro and micro interests, bridging social structure and social psychological processes. Macro methodologies cover, for example: (1) concerns with developing sport as a science (Luschen 1980); (2) global politics (Strenk 1979); (3) sociohistorical labor and leisure development (Zarnowski 2004); (4) the accessibility of sport to various classes and social mobility (Kahn 2000); and (5) the role of media in generating national identities (Lowes 1997). Micro orientations will focus inquiry on (1) sport preferences and participation (Miller et al. 2002); (2) socialization (McNulty & Eitle 2002); (3) self-esteem (Adler et al. 1992); (4) immortalizing the self through sport (Schmitt & Leonard 1986); and (5) sport play to display (Stone 1955).

Still being a young field, the areas in need of theoretical attention are vast. While race, class, gender, and media studies have moved sport away from an ‘‘orphan speciality’’ status (Frey & Eitzen, 1991), other intriguing substantive areas remain fertile ground for development. Three areas which are particularly fruitful are the political nature of sport, sport as art, and the moral assumptions embedded in sport.

Political Nature of Sport

Viewing sports as politics is not new. This connection has been referred to as ‘‘war without weapons.’’ Strenk (1979) points out how Nazis under Hitler and Fascists under Mussolini propagandized sport. The globalization process seems to have only increased the prominence of sport in politics. Examples of the obvious intersection of sport and politics include:

The losers of world wars have been banned for several years from the Olympic movement (the US refused visas to East Germans for two decades).

Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Melbourne Olympics in protest of the Suez war. Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands withdrew over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and China pulled out in a continuing demonstration against the International Olympic Committee recognition of Taiwan.

South Africa was barred from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The Mexican government shot and killed students protesting the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Arab terrorists kidnapped and killed Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972.

32 nations boycotted the 1976 Olympics in Montreal because New Zealand maintained sports relations with South Africa.

The US, followed by West Germany and Japan, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In return, the Soviet bloc boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

North Korea, Cuba, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua boycotted the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Gabon, Congo, Honduras, and El Salvador have gone to war over the outcome of soccer games.

The US and Russia attempted to proclaim superiority of their political and socioeconomic systems by winning the most Olympic gold medals.

The US used table tennis to open relations with China.

Sports have been ‘‘justified since antiquity for providing soldiers with the physical training they would require in battle’’ (Semenza 2001). There is always binary opposition in battle. It is one team against another, one country against another, one individual against another, one alliance against another. Further, encounters in both sport and war are fundamentally a physical contest. Even competitors in sports where there is no direct physical contact between opponents understand their contest as one of warlike physical opposition. Finally, there are consequences for winning or losing. These may be concrete or symbolic, but they are clearly valued by competitors, as demonstrated by fierce competition and emotional reactions to winning and losing.

Gender also links sport and war. Male gendered traits tied to physicality, power, and domination underlie both the good athlete and the good soldier. Generally, sports are not simply the random assertion of masculinity; rather, they are structured expressions of it, reflecting past, dominant, institutionalized representations of masculinity (i.e., war). Social theory can further illuminate similarities in sport and war, generating insight into current international political relations as well as reaching into the social psychological production of gendered identities.

Sport as Art

Athletes talk about a sense of effortless competency, a flow felt while playing where it all comes together – all the training, studying, and coaching. During this experience the mind seems to stop and there is expanded vision beyond thought. This is referred to as ‘‘being in the zone’’ or what we call a creative action rhythm. It emerges from a twofold process: (1) learning, by first absorbing all that one can from books, practice, and coaches/teachers, and (2) creative acting, where one acts out of what was learned instead of merely imitating. This creative action rhythm is the very essence of the true athlete as artist.

The dependence of sport on rules may suggest an opposition to creativity. But suppose the rules were restrictive and it was possible for them to remove the artistic, creative element of sport and that athletes merely applied what they had learned from their coaches. Would sport still be enjoyed by spectators? Would athletes still practice their crafts with passion and dedication? Imagine going to a basketball game where the players seldom did anything new. We would only tolerate it for young players, and then maybe only if the players were our own children. But reflect on how excited we are when a successful, dynamic, creative play occurs. These are actually the moments which give meaning to sport. These moments, when sport transcends physical mechanics and becomes emotionally salient, are what allow individuals to experience creative participation, even as spectators.

Young (1999) shares an interesting theoretical framework in this regard. Calling on Heidegger, he reminds us, ‘‘poetically dwells man upon this earth.’’ This means, without art, he merely exists. Sport, like art, conjures emotion in the participant as well as the viewer. This emotion pulls us away from the maze of everyday details, demands, and decisions (Goffman 1961). This emotional experience is the essence of art and it is clearly found in sport.

Attending a sporting contest is itself seeking artistic expression (Young 1999). The game setting is far from the ordinary. Our team reveals the multicultural mix of our community, but is integrated. And although we sit in hierarchical seating, we experience union with one another, a manifest integrity of our community. We share a national anthem. We see our morality in the rules (e.g., fairness, earned accomplishment, etc.). The athletic activity, although subordinated to rules, encourages equality between competitors, but yet does not get in the way of artistic expression. We can see the virtues of skills. And however well planned and rehearsed, with the final outcome, we come to grips with being mortal. Through the athletic artistic expression, we are transported from our ‘‘average everydayness’’ into Augenblick, the ‘‘moment of vision’’ (Young 1999). The athlete helps us see the hero that is concealed in everyday characters. Social theory, particularly in the sociology of emotions, has much to contribute and gain from studying the creative, artistic, and emotional qualities of sport, and the meanings we bring and take away from our games (Duquin 2000).

Moral Assumptions Embedded in Sport

Sport both embodies and impresses particular assumptions about human nature and a moral order. Particularly central to youth sports, the debate about the value of competition represents broader clashes over human nature itself. In a cyclical fashion, sport both assumes competition as an innate human quality and in turn teaches that this is the case. Like much western social, political, and economic theory, implicit in sport is the ideological assumption of a human will to power. The extent to which this is innate rather than cultural, if it is at all, remains unclear. There is evidence that this sort of orientation is primarily cultural (Sahlins 1972). Many traditional societies often do not overtly reflect this will to power. Thus, one might claim that it is the institutionalization and structure of sports, which most often follow a western, capitalist model of competition, that produce these tendencies. Sahlins (1972) similarly found that small, primitive societies tended to develop westernized power orientations only after being engulfed in larger, organized states. Sport is certainly one arena in which investigation into the matter may prove fruitful.

While emphasis on competition is still the pervasive ethos of sport, some youth organizations have consciously shifted away from a competitive model. For example, there are leagues in which everyone receives a participation trophy rather than just rewarding top place teams and most valuable players. Coaches may be discouraged from emphasizing winning as a value, or even from showing too much enthusiasm for ‘‘successful’’ play (e.g., within the American Christian Upward Program). These organizations present an opportunity for sociology to address some competing hypotheses embedded in the ideologies of these typical and counter typical models of sport. Social theory ought to be able to contribute to and gain from the study of youth development, attitudes, and mental health by comparing these different models of sport, which seem particularly polarized concerning the value of competition.

We might compare the current diversity in the world to a prism. The nature of the prism’s color spectrum is that there is no connectedness between colors, meaning there is no identifiable demarcating line that defines the end of one color and the beginning of another. It is essential to realize that one of the colors in the spectrum of global diversity is sport. Its boundaries blend and merge with the agenda and concerns of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, family, work, leisure, economic development, politics, global relations, etc. The selected literature cited here points to the possibilities of interdisciplinary social theory development.

Bibliography:

Adler, P., Kless, S., & Adler, P. (1992) Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Children. Sociology of Education 65: 169-87.

Bourdieu, P. (1991 [1978]) Sport and Social Class. In: Mukerji, C. & Schidson, M. (Eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 357-73.

Coakley, J. (2004) Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. McGraw Hill, Boston.

Duquin, M. (2000) Sport and Emotions. In: Coakley, J. & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Handbook of Sports Studies. Sage, London, pp. 477-89.

Frey, J. & Eitzen, D. S. (1991) Sport and Society. Annual Review of Sociology 17: 503-22.

Goffman, E. (1961) Encounters. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis.

Kahn, L. (2000) The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14: 75-94.

Lowes, M. (1997) Sports Page: A Case Study in the Manufacture of Sports News for the New Press. Sociology of Sport 14: 143-59.

Luschen, G. (1980) Sociology of Sport: Development, Present State, and Prospects. Annual Review of Sociology 6: 315-47.

McNulty, T. & Eitle, D. (2002) Race, Cultural Capital, and the Educational Effects of Participation in Sports. Sociology of Education 75: 123-46.

Miller, K., Barnes, G., Melnick, M., Sabo, D., & Farrell, M. (2002) Gender and Racial/Ethnic Differences in Predicting Adolescent Sexual Risk: Athletic Participation versus Exercise. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43: 436-50.

Reiss, S. (1990) The New Sport History. Reviews in American History 18: 311-25.

Sahlins, D. (1972) Stone Age Economics. Aldine, Chicago.

Schmitt, R. & Leonard, W. (1986) Immortalizing the Self through Sport. American Journal of Sociology 91: 1088-111.

Semenza, G. (2001) Sport, War, and Contest in Shakespeare’s Henry VI. Renaissance Quarterly 54: 1251-72.

Stone, G. (1955) American Sports: Play and Display. Chicago Review 9: 83-100.

Strenk, A. (1979) What Price Victory? The World of International Sports and Politics. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 445: 128-40.

Washington, R. & Karen, D. (2001) Sport and Society. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 187-212.

Young, J. (1999) Artwork and Sportwork: Heideggerian Reflections. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57: 267-77.

Zarnowski, F. (2004) Working at Play: The Phenomenon of 19th-Century Worker-Competitions. Journal of Leisure Research 36: 257-82.