By Timo Lyyra, May 31st, 2013 
A report in The New York Times highlighted the connection between the recent riots in Sweden with earlier events in France in 2005 and Great Britain in 2011. A storm is threatening these countries, and Europe more broadly: fundamental problems with immigration policies and national political identities, and in a tragic way, the whole world is not watching. Rather festering problems are being ignored, with politicians putting their heads in the sand, nicely demonstrated by Sweden’s center-right prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt: “Just hooliganism.”
Timo Lyyra, the former assistant director of The New School’s Transregional Center of Democratic Studies, presently working in Gothenburg, Sweden, and my friend, gave a clear response to this know-nothingism on his Facebook page. -Jeff
Hooliganism? No; it’s a conflict in a class society built along racial and ethnic lines and reinforced through, not even always very subtle, social, cultural, economic, and geographic segregation.
The 1st generation is always happy just to be able to bring the kids to safety; the 2nd generation is always optimistic they’ll become like everyone else once they get an education; and the 3rd generation realizes that education helps nothing, and they’ll never get out of the miserable faraway suburbs they’ve been confined to and never become accepted as “real Swedes” on equal footing with everyone else.
. . .
Read more: They’re Rioting in Sweden (and in France and in Great Britain)
By Andrea Hajek, May 30th, 2013 
Metaphorically speaking, Italy has had its share of earthquakes over the past few years. After Berlusconi’s government was dissolved in order to make way for Mario Monti’s technical government, life was turned upside down with the introduction of new taxes, the eruption of financial scandals involving all major political parties, and the success of comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in the elections of February 2013.
Further, in May 2012, Italy was shook up in a more literal way. The Northern region of Emilia-Romagna was struck by a heavy earthquake, which was repeated ten days later. A year has passed and much has yet to be done. Nevertheless, during the anniversary, politicians and the media indulged in a triumphant rhetoric that highlighted the great commitment of citizens and institutions in the reconstruction of “Emilia” (the western and north-eastern part of the region, where the epicenter of the earthquake was based). A reconstruction has yet to begin, leading to an explosion of local grassroots committees consisting of people who were affected both by the earthquake and by a bureaucratic rigmarole. The state bureaucracy has complicated the lives of the locals, this in a climate of crisis and austerity. As the state has responded only to the degree that it serves private corporate interests, citizens were left to fend for themselves, repeating a historic pattern.
The Emilia earthquake represents the last in a series of natural disasters in Italy, which never really produced any progressive legislation capable of transmitting know-how to future generations. A law was first passed in the 1970s, in the wake of two catastrophes that drew wide media attention. In 1980, a disastrous earthquake in the mountainous Irpinia region (Southern Italy) further sensitized public opinion, leading to the creation – in 1982 – of the Ministry of Civil Protection. However, the national civil protection system originated only in 1992, whereas the first legislative decree that would give the Italian regions executive powers was created years later (for a brief history of civil protection in Italy see David E. Alexander, “The Evolution . . .
Read more: Economic Shock Therapy, Italian style: Reflections on the 2012 Earthquake
By Tim Rosenkranz, May 28th, 2013 
“Say Yes to the Dress” portrays one of the existential dilemmas women in the age of consumer society face. It is an emotional rollercoaster of wonder, judgment, deliberation, budgeting, frustration and decision. “Say Yes to the Dress” is a reality-TV show on TLC. For some, the show might look like a scene straight out of Theodore Adorno’s nightmare of “mass deception,” the display of the human tragedy in a world of commodities. But “Say Yes to the Dress” also presents in 60-minute segments, why the critique of consumer culture misses the point: Commodities are more than the meaningless, exchangeable representations critical theory makes them out to be. Instead, commodities mean everything to people. We cry, laugh, scream, or fight over them and we triumph or fail through them.
“In a series of posts, Jeff Goldfarb and I [Iddo Tavory] have been sketching an outline for the study of the social condition — the predictable dilemmas that haunt social life. We argue that one of the core intellectual missions of sociology is to account for the ways in which social patterns set up these dilemmas that actors experience as crucial for their lives and how they define themselves.”
I have been following Jeff and Iddo’s project for a while, and I suggest that it will help to further the understanding of the social condition if we take seriously the daily dramas of consumption, both as comedy and tragedy. “Say Yes to the Dress” is one of these social dramas, based on the very premise that buying a wedding dress really matters, that people do not make their consumption decisions lightly.
Of course “Say Yes to the Dress” is an edited and selective social drama, following a similar script each episode. The bride comes into the wedding dress shop with her entourage (family and friends). The consultant clarifies the parameters of the desired dress, first with the bride alone: What does she want, what is her budget? Then, the two pick some options in a dressing room. The bride dresses, and the trial . . .
Read more: “Say Yes to the Dress” – Consumption and the Social Condition
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 24th, 2013 
In the news accounts on graduation ceremonies, the speeches of public figures are highlighted. This is not a bad thing. Important matters, more deliberately considered, are put on the public agenda. Thus, to take a key example, President Obama has used commencement addresses to present his deep assessment of the state of the union, as a recent report by NPR reveals. Obama, as the ceremonial speaker seriously reflects on the gap between past and future, assessing American promise and problems, using his full intelligence, free, or at least somewhat free, of the inside the beltway logic of official Washington and the popular media. A good thing, no doubt.
Yet, for me, significant oratory by Obama, and lesser public speakers, is not where the real action is on graduation day. Rather, I focus on the achievements of the graduates, our students and their promise, what they have said and done already, and where they may bring us. They help me understand the personal and the political, and all that lies in between. It is with this in mind that I am leaving my house this morning for The New School’s commencement, thinking once again about the relationship between promise and practice at The New School, specifically as it is revealed in the work of three new Ph.Ds.
Julie Tel Rav, a trained architect, turned sociologist, and a rabbi’s wife, used her broad creative and intellectual interests, and her communal experience to examine how the material environment influences ritual and everyday life of a religious community. In Set in Stone: The Influence of Architecture on the Progressive Amercan Jewish Community, she explores Jewish synagogues and community centers across the country, and how the built environment supports and undermines the goals of congregations. Particularly interesting is her thesis that the makers of the buildings seek to use physical space as a key support for Jewish ritual communal life, substituting space for time. This was her unanticipated finding, which emerged as her research proceeded. It was her discovery, which I found particularly interesting, as I . . .
Read more: Commencement: Principle Practiced at The New School for Social Research
By Mark Frazier, May 22nd, 2013 
When I’m in China, conversations with friends and colleagues often begin with their asking about the name of my university: Why is it called “The New School?” Most are not familiar with the university, but when I mention the name of John Dewey and the intellectual spirit associated with the university’s founding in 1919, there’s an immediate connection. Dewey traveled and lectured in China beginning in 1919, just as The New School was being established, and just as Chinese intellectuals were engaging in unprecedented forms of public engagement and education.
For Chinese intellectuals and students today, 1919 invokes the stirrings of the “New Culture Movement” and the foundations of the Chinese revolution more broadly. The New Culture Movement is closely associated with what became known as the “May Fourth Movement,” so named for the student protests in Beijing on that day in 1919 to reject the humiliating outcome of the Paris Peace Conference. The protest was over the terms that allowed Japan to retain territorial concessions that had been negotiated before the war by a discredited president of the fledgling Republic of China. (The Qing dynasty had fallen in 1911-12.) But the May Fourth Movement was less about geopolitics and much more about the vibrant intellectual pursuit and experimentation with new ideas–anarchism, Marxism, socialism, and much else.
John Dewey arrived in China just a few days after May 4, 1919, and would spend the next two years teaching and lecturing at Chinese universities. Dewey had been invited by his former student at Columbia, Hu Shih, by then a prominent leader in the New Culture Movement. Hu, like others in the movement, advocated the wholesale rejection of Confucian culture and practice–first and foremost the educational precepts that stressed the close engagement with Confucian and other classical texts. In its place, Hu and those who would become the presidents and chancellors of China’s leading universities adopted many of Dewey’s ideas about education and its roles in constituting citizenship, democratic practice, among much else.
Several scholars have examined closely Dewey’s China lectures and his writings from . . .
Read more: John Dewey in China
By Richard Ware Adams, May 19th, 2013 
These are notes not just for an obituary, but as well for a possible contribution to a broader celebration of Bill Miles’s life and work. I had the pleasure of working with him closely on his first two film projects, but we were friends for fifty years. He died on May 12th.
At the New York Film Festival in 1977, at a time when many held the military and even patriotism in low esteem, more than a few in the audience of generally anti-war film buffs found themselves moved to tears by the patriotic spirit expressed in the first film by African-American filmmaker William Miles, called “Men of Bronze,” about an infantry regiment from Harlem that, along with three others, served as an integral part of the French Army in World War I. That was because the U.S. Army wanted blacks to serve as labor troops, whereas the French needed reinforcements. For many in the audience it may have been the first time in a long while that a love of country had been tapped, and it was done by unwanted black troops in what, under Miles’s direction, became a startlingly good-natured, upbeat attack on American racism. The film went on to repeated broadcasts on PBS and led to Miles’s four-part history of Harlem’s first 370 years, “I Remember Harlem,” another classic of black history.
William Miles became a resident producer at Channel 13, covered many other forgotten chapters of black history from sports to space, and won numerous awards that include an Emmy, the Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia Award, an Oscar nomination, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. His work continues to be seen by PBS viewers, students, and schoolchildren around the country. He always regarded the children as his most important audience.
Bill was born August 19, 1931, on Harlem’s 126th Street, directly behind the Apollo Theater. As a young kid, he helped the movie projectionist re-wind the films. A graduate of the Benjamin Franklin High School, . . .
Read more: Documentary Filmmaker William Miles, 82, Brought Lost Chapters of Black History to Life
By Jeremy D. Safran, May 16th, 2013 
In an article in The New York Times last week, “Psychiatry’s Guide is Out of Touch with Science, Experts Say,” science reporters, Pam Belluck and Benedict Carey, describe an important new initiative by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the largest source of federal funding for mental health research. The new initiative criticizes the soon to be published fifth edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), offering a new framework for guiding research and focusing funding priorities in mental health research. Belluck and Carey’s article emphasizes the optimism and excitement shared by a number of prominent experts about the adoption of this new framework, known as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). In order to understand the true significance of this development, it is important for us to have a greater appreciation of the broader context in which this important change is taking place. I am ambivalent, some significant problems are being addressed, but other problems may be exacerbated in this latest development in the politics of the sciences of the mind and the brain.
Towards the end of May, the American Psychiatric Association will release its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). This long awaited update of the DSM (colloquially referred to by some as the “Bible of Psychiatry”) has been the focus of considerable prepublication controversy among mental health professionals and has been discussed extensively in important media outlets including The New York Times. Previous editions of the DSM have also received media attention. But DSM-5 has raised the intensity of the controversy to unprecedented heights, in part because of the widely publicized criticisms of psychiatry insiders including Allan Frances (the chair of the task force that developed DSM-4) and Robert Spitzer (who chaired the DSM-3 task force). Criticisms of DSM-5 are similar in nature (if not intensity) to those leveled at both DSM-4 and DSM-3. For example, claims for the degree of reliability of diagnostic categories are exaggerated, evidence . . .
Read more: Psychiatry in the News and the Medicalization of the Emotional Life
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 11th, 2013 
“There are more than 8 million ordinary objects in this city that carry within them a sense of its inimitable expression. They express its thundering diversity or a thorough particularity; they connect us to other places, past and present or moor us to the here and now; they enliven or aggravate daily life; they epitomize the city at large or hold true to one of its neighborhoods. They may be small, held, and mobile, or large, unwieldy, and stationary. Well-designed or just well-used, they live and survive, creating a ripple of small meanings.”
With this declaration my colleague, Radhika Subramaniam, the chief curator of Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, invited New School faculty, including me, to contribute to her unusual show at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery planned for this summer, “Masterpieces of Everyday New York: Objects as Story.”
Radhika hopes a diverse group — designers, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, writers and musicians — will identify meaningful material objects in everyday life and use them to tell the story of our city. I am intrigued. She has provoked me to think about my material environment and how it speaks to me, and the broader theoretical and political implications of this.
As the author of The Politics of Small Things, I also have special interest. My “small things” was inspired by Arundhati Roy’s in the novel The God of Small Things: gestures and interactions among people as they define and create their social world, constituting their freedom and dignity, and power. In contrast, Radhika is pushing us to think about things material, not human, given in nature and shaped by men and women.
And indeed I have been thinking about such matters recently, taking part in The Politics of Materiality Conference at The New School, listening to an intriguing lecture by Nicolas Langlitz, “Homo Academicus Among Other Cooperative Primates,” attempting to make sense of the research and writing of Bruno Latour, pushed by a number of my challenging students, aided by attending Iddo Tavory’s class . . .
Read more: An Everyday New York Masterpiece: The Inconspicuous, Understated, Wise, 9/11 Memorial of the Union Square Subway Station
To skip this introduction and go directly to read Jeff Weintraub’s In-Depth Analysis “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?” click here.
I was sure in the lead up to the Iraq War that it wouldn’t happen. It seemed obvious to me that it made no sense, and I couldn’t believe that the U.S. would embark on such foolishness. One of my big mistakes, obviously. While Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and American capacity to wage two wars, one clearly by choice, seemed to be a huge strategic mistake, the war proceeded and escalated, and we have paid.
Nonetheless, I did understand why deposing Saddam was desirable. His regime was reprehensible. I respected those who called for opposition to its totalitarianism, from the informed Kanan Makiya to my Central European friends, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel, et al. I even said so at an anti-war rally.
Yet, connecting the means at our disposal with the desirable end of a free and democratic Iraq seemed to me to be an extraordinarily difficult project, and I had absolutely no confidence that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Company could pull it off. How could my intelligent friends who supported the war not see that? I actually had a number of heated public discussions with Michnik about that.
Once begun, I hoped that the intervention would be short and sweet, and hoped that a democratic transition could be managed, but as we now know these hopes were frustrated. From every point of view, the war was a disaster: for the Iraq, the region, the U.S., and the project of democracy, and the way the war was fought, as it was part of a purported global war against terror, . . .
Read more: Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War: Introduction
By Jeff Weintraub, May 9th, 2013 Lately, like a lot of other people, I’ve been mulling over the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war and the flood of retrospective commentary it has generated. Nowadays, almost all discussions of the war are dominated by a hegemonic, almost monolithic, “anti-war” consensus that the war was both a terrible disaster and an obvious mistake. (Not just a mistake, but an obvious and unambiguous mistake, which no intelligent and morally serious person could honestly have supported at the time unless they were bamboozled by the propaganda campaign of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration and its lackeys and/or blinded by post-9/11 hysteria.)
There are clearly some good grounds for holding those views (as well as a lot of bad, dishonest, intellectually lazy, and morally evasive ones); and for anyone who supported the war, like me, the past decade has often been a morally harrowing time (or should have been, at least). But I remain convinced that the question was more complicated than that in 2002-2003 and is still more complicated today.
Nor, I would like to believe, do I say that merely to cover my own ass (morally and analytically speaking) with a mealy-mouthed unwillingness to face up honestly to the moral and intellectual issues involved. Back in 2002-2003 I thought (and said quite explicitly) that there were good and bad arguments on both sides of the question (with more bad ones than good ones on both sides), and I think that’s still true now … though any serious discussion would also have to take account of what has actually happened in the past decade. (I could no longer simply repeat all the arguments I made back in 2002-2003 without serious revisions or modifications, but making a full-scale public recantation, as some other one-time supporters of the war have done, wouldn’t be honest in my case either.)
I have been struck, in particular, that the vast bulk of recent discussions expressing the “anti-war” groupthink, which is rarely challenged, are marked by two massive omissions.
=> First, while they properly emphasize the terrible results of the war and its aftermath for Iraqis, for Americans, and for others, they almost never consider the actual and probable costs—human, economic, . . .
Read more: Some Partial, Preliminary, & Unfashionable Thoughts toward Re-assessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right, and What Were the Alternatives?
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