Like many users of the Internet I suffer terribly from net-induced attention deficit disorder, that terrible affliction that causes one to ceaselessly click on ‘Check Mail’ buttons, switch between a dozen tabs, log-in-log-out, reload, and perhaps worst of all, seek my machine immediately upon waking in the mornings. My distraction isn’t unique, but it hasContinue reading “That Beehive in Your Head? That’s Just the Net Calling”
Category Archives: Books
Nick Drake’s ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’ and Urban Melancholia
I discovered Nick Drake late, very late. Back in 2007, Scott Dexter and I were busy dealing with the release of our book Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software; mainly, this involved engaging in some spirited discussions online with other folks interested in free software, the creative commons, free culture, andContinue reading “Nick Drake’s ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’ and Urban Melancholia”
The Pleasures of Etymology Lessons
A persistent reaction of mine while reading is to react with little starts of pleasure when I encounter a little etymology lesson tucked away in the pages of my read. Recently, for instance, I found out that ‘hornbook‘–referring to treatises that aim to provide balanced summaries of a particular area of legal study–originated in EnglandContinue reading “The Pleasures of Etymology Lessons”
Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism
My post yesterday on the debate on the Factories Act of 1844 was written to remind ourselves of the perennial dismissal–in the all-too-familiar language of economic efficiency–of attempts to introduce values pertinent to worker-side regulation in industrial workplaces. As noted, I had borrowed the example from Andrew Feenberg’s Reason and Modernity, his latest book in aContinue reading “Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism”
The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor
One of the dominant threads–sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit–in any modern conversation about employer-side regulation of the workplace (health and safety standards, worker unions etc) is that such constraints are invariably economically inefficient, a burden on the profit-making potential of the enterprise. The parameters for this conversation are drawn from a sparse set consisting of technocraticContinue reading “The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor”
Geertz on Comparative Anthropology and the Law-Fact Distinction
(Continuing my series of notes on Clifford Geertz’s Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic Books, New York, 1983; earlier notes appear here and here.) Geertz’s Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective (first presented as the Storrs Lectures for 1981 at Yale Law School; an online version is available) should be essential reading for philosophers of law.Continue reading “Geertz on Comparative Anthropology and the Law-Fact Distinction”
Reflections on Translations – IV: Embedded, Untranslated Text, and Tintin
Louis Mackay has an interesting article at the London Review of Books Blog (‘Tintin in China’, 11 June 2012) , which continues an examination–commenced by Christopher Taylor (LRB, 7 June 2012)–of the Chinese artist Zhang Congren’s influence on Tintin‘s creator Hergé. (In particular his influence on one of Hergé’s earliest Tintin adventures, The Blue Lotus.) Zhang influencedContinue reading “Reflections on Translations – IV: Embedded, Untranslated Text, and Tintin”
Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
In ‘Five Parables’ (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes, I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last meeting, some studentsContinue reading “Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be”
Geertz, the ‘Anthropological Understanding,’ and Persons
(As promised in an earlier post on Clifford Geertz, I will be posting a few reactions here to his essays in Local Knowledge.) In ‘”From The Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding’, (from Local Knowledge: Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic Books, New York, 1983, pp 59), Clifford Geertz writes, The concept of person is…an excellentContinue reading “Geertz, the ‘Anthropological Understanding,’ and Persons”
Man as Matter: On Seeing A Headless Corpse
Some thirty or so years ago, I saw a human body without a head. I was then on summer vacation, visiting family in Central India, and one day, plans were announced to attend a wedding taking place in a neighboring small town. My aunt and cousins would leave by the morning local train; my uncle, myContinue reading “Man as Matter: On Seeing A Headless Corpse”
Samir Chopra 