A few days ago, I posted the following status on my Facebook page: Sometimes, over the course of a semester’s worth of reading and discussing material with one’s students, you can feel a sort of collective convergence on some substantive theses. This semester, my Political Philosophy class and I were in agreement on this one:Continue reading “The Incompatibiity Of Democracy And The Modern Nation-State”
Tag Archives: bureaucrats
Neil Postman On Disguised Technologies, And The Night Class
In his sometimes curiously conservative Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman writes: Some technologies come in disguise. Rudyard Kipling called them “technologies in repose.” They do not look like technologies, and because of that they do their work, for good or ill, without much criticism or even awareness. This applies not only to IQ tests and toContinue reading “Neil Postman On Disguised Technologies, And The Night Class”
A Day in Gaol, Part Deux: Notes on Police, Precincts, and Penality
Spending a day in jail has some social scientific value for the temporarily detained; it enables a closer, albeit short-lived, look at the systems of policing and criminal justice. And because I often expend much time on this blog railing against the excesses of the New York City Police Department, it makes especial sense forContinue reading “A Day in Gaol, Part Deux: Notes on Police, Precincts, and Penality”
The Bureaucrat and the Supplicant’s Wheedle
In a couple of posts a month or so ago, I had written about bureaucrats and the torture they subject their clients to. (As I noted then, growing up in India I was one such client and then later, as an international student in the US, I dealt with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.)Continue reading “The Bureaucrat and the Supplicant’s Wheedle”
Samir Chopra 