In Acts of Meaning (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp. 96-97), Jerome Bruner writes When there is a breakdown in a culture…it can usually be traced to one of several things. The first is a deep disagreement about what constitutes the ordinary and canonical in life and what the exceptional and divergent….this we know inContinue reading “Jerome Bruner On Cultures That ‘Breakdown’”
Tag Archives: culture wars
Ross Douthat Finds ‘Ascendant Social Liberalism’ Lurking Beneath His Bed
The New York Times’ Resident Sophist Laureate, Ross Douthat, has a long-running argumentative and rhetorical strategy of suggesting, through dark imprecations, that ‘liberalism’ and ‘godlessness’ are to blame for America’s social evils, for they they have produced them by provoking a reaction to their excesses. If only social and political movements didn’t engage in suchContinue reading “Ross Douthat Finds ‘Ascendant Social Liberalism’ Lurking Beneath His Bed”
Academic Arguments, Sports, and Urban Policing as ‘War’
In the introduction to The Social Construction of What? Ian Hacking writes: Labels such as ‘‘the culture wars,’’ ‘‘the science wars,’’ or ‘‘the Freud wars’’ are now widely used to refer to some of the disagreements that plague contemporary intellectual life. I will continue to employ those labels, from time to time, in this book, for my themesContinue reading “Academic Arguments, Sports, and Urban Policing as ‘War’”
Samir Chopra 