Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 By Fernanda Canofre dos Santos | 
Last summer in The New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, I taught a course on the new “new social movements,” comparing the social movements of 2011-2 with those of 1968 and 1989. The working thesis: “While traditional social movements were primarily about resources and interest, and “the new social movements” of the late 20th century were more centered on questions of identity, as Touraine and Melucci investigated, the social movements of our most recent past and of the present day are primarily about addressing perceived injustices through the constitution of autonomous publics.” This year I am teaching a variation on last year’s theme. Focusing on how the new social movements and the publics they create interact with existing political institutions and parties. “The center of our investigation will be a sociology of publics as they mediate between institutional politics and social movements. We will work on developing a framework for exploring the way movements create new publics, and affect the operations of political parties and the direction of state policy.” Recent events in Brazil, Turkey and Iran (and elsewhere) illuminate the problems I hope we will investigate next month. Today, the first of a series of reports on these developments: a letter to last year’s seminar participants from Fernanda Canofre dos Santos on unfolding protests in Brazil. Coming up a report on Turkey and Iran. -Jeff
It’s been a while and I hope everyone is doing great. Well, I’m back to Brazil, and after everything that is happening here this week (I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but anyway), I just felt that I had . . .
Read more: A Letter on the Brazilian Protests
Friday, June 14th, 2013 
Now that the Obama administration has concluded that the red line has been crossed, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own people, there will be more military aid for the rebels from the U.S. and its allies. Although this will certainly affect the course of the war (though the rebels and their strong supporters, such as John McCain, will demand more), equally certain is that this aid will not on its own positively affect the prospects for a just peace, with an improved situation for the Syrian people in their diversity.
The dark situation that Hakan Topal described in his last post on Syria (and Turkey and its neo-Ottoman foreign policy) stands: profoundly undemocratic and illiberal, brutal and barbarian actions are on both sides of the Syrian military conflict. The victory of one side or the other is likely to yield very unpleasant outcomes, as each side reveals itself with more and more horrific means of fighting, and more and more sectarian commitments.
The story of the Syrian opposition is tragic. A very hopeful peaceful protest was heartlessly repressed. The bravery of peaceful protestors in the face of military force, including bombings, was remarkable. I watched the persistence of the protests in the face of brutal force with wonder and deep admiration. Violent resistance was an understandable last resort.
But as resistance fighters have replaced peaceful protesters, and as the war has escalated, with the fortunes of each side rising and falling, the nature of the war seems to have fundamentally undermined the ideals of the protest. Islamist true belief seems to have overwhelmed democratic and pluralistic commitment. Sectarian interest, defense and retribution seem to animate the resistance’s actions, no less than the actions of the government forces and the forces of Hezbollah.
I want to believe that out of this mess something less than horrific may result. But by reading the headlines and the debates here in the U.S., . . .
Read more: Syria: Despair, Tragedy and Hope
Tuesday, June 11th, 2013 
Today I explore the relationship between Obama’s national security address with his surveillance policies. Many see the distance between his speech and action as proof of their cynicism about Obama and more generally about American politicians. I note that the distance can provide the grounds for the opposite of cynicism, i.e. consequential criticism. But for this to be the case, there has to be public concern, something I fear is lacking.
I am an Obama partisan, as any occasional reader of this blog surely knows. One such reader, in a response to my last post on Obama’s national security address, on Facebook declared: “your endless contortions in support of this non-entity make you look increasingly ridiculous.” He wondered: “Is this really what a ‘public intellectual’ looks like today?” I am not profoundly hurt by this. I am enjoying the one time in my life that I actually support an American political leader in power. I was an early supporter of the State Senator from the south side of Chicago and find good reasons to appreciate his leadership to this day. Through his person and his words, he has changed American identity, to the pleasure of the majority and the great displeasure to a significant minority. Obamacare is his singular accomplishment. He rationally responded to the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, despite sustained opposition. Perhaps he could have done more, but powerful forces were aligned against him. He has carefully redirected American foreign policy, cooperating with allies and the international organizations, engaging enemies, working to shift the balance between diplomacy and armed force. Obama has worked to move the center left, as I analyze carefully in Reinventing Political Culture, and I applaud his efforts even when he has not succeeded.
That said I have been disappointed on some matters, and I want to be clear about them here. In my judgment, the surge in Afghanistan didn’t make much sense. The escalating use of drones, without clear . . .
Read more: Obama’s Dragnet: Speech versus Action
Friday, June 7th, 2013 
I believe that the disclosures concerning the surveillance of phone records and internet communications in the Guardian and The Washington Post underscore the significance of President Obama’s recent speech on national security. His words provide the most cogent means to appraise his responsibilities for his administration’s actions. Today an analysis of the speech and the responses to it: in my next post, I will reflect on its significance in light of recent events. -Jeff
In his address to the National Defense University on May 23, 2013, President Obama set out to transform the common sense about terrorism and the proper American response to it. He continued what I take to be his major goal: the reinvention of American political culture, pushing the center left on a broad range of problems and principles, often meeting great resistance. In this particular instance, the change he sought at NDU, was apparently quite simple, moving from a war on terror to a struggle against terrorists, ending the prospect of total and endless war against an enemy whose power has been greatly and routinely exaggerated. The suggestion of the simple change understandably elicited strong and conflicting reactions. I think these reactions, along with the speech itself, illuminate the significance of Obama’s latest performance as “storyteller-in-chief.”
The editorial board of The New York Times declared:
“President Obama’s speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America.”
Over on the op.ed. page a few days later, Ross Douthat presented a cynical alternative:
“President Obama’s speech national security last week was a dense thicket of self-justifying argument, but its central message was perfectly clear: Please don’t worry, liberals. I’m not George W. Bush.”
At The New York Review of Books, David Cole judged:
“President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday . . .
Read more: Obama’s National Security Speech: The Politics of a Big Thing
Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 
Hakan Topal wrote this piece before the recent protests and repression in Turkey. It provides a perspective for understanding those events, as it highlights the tragedy of Syria and how Turkish policy is implicated. -Jeff
At the end of May, the Syrian civil war consumed more than 94,000 civilians and destroyed the country’s civic and cultural heritage. In addition, the civil war crystallized regional fault lines along the sectarian lines; on the one side Sunni Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, on the other side Shiite Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon) represent ever-increasing nationalistic conflicts.
While Assad’s army commits war crimes, kills thousands of civilians, and unleashes its terror on its population, factions within the Free Syrian Army utilize comparable tactics to bring Assad’s supporters to submission. This is a war with plenty of religious morality but without ethics. In a recent video circulated on YouTube, a Free Syrian Army guerilla cuts the chest of a dead Syrian soldier and eats it in front of the camera. How can we make sense of this absolute brutality?
Islamists who have no interest in democratic transformation hijacked the Syrian revolution. Any salient voices for the possibility of a diplomatic solution are silenced, effectively forcing the country into a never-ending sectarian war. Can the total destruction of the social and cultural infrastructure be for the sake any political agenda or social imagination? What will happen when the regime falls? Is there a future for Syrians?
And tragically, the civil war cannot be simply contained within Syria. It is quickly expanding beyond its borders, scratching local religious, sectarian and political sensitivities, especially in Turkey and Lebanon. A recent bombing in Reyhanli—a small town at the Turkish-Syrian border with largely Arab Alevi minority population—killed 54 people and subsequently, the Turkish government quickly covered up the incident and accused a left wing fraction having close ties with Assad regime of mounting the attacks. It was a premature and doubtful conclusion. Leftist guerillas have no history of attacking . . .
Read more: Turkey and Syria: On the Bankruptcy of Neo-Ottomanist Foreign Policy
Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 By Meral Ugur Cinar | 
The summer came late this year. So did the Turkish Spring. A week ago, few would have guessed that people from all walks of life would join this week’s protests in Turkey. After all, public protests are not a commonly accepted thing in Turkey. Especially in the post-1980 military coup era public, protests are mostly depicted both by politicians and by the mainstream media as works of “marginal groups.”
The protests that spread throughout all Turkey started at the Taksim Square in Istanbul. The AKP government planned to change the structure of Taksim Square, which involved the uprooting of trees in the Gezi Park in Taksim. The plan was to rebuild the demolished Topçu Barracks from the Ottoman Empire, adding a new shopping mall. Concerned with the diminishing sources of oxygen and gathering places in Istanbul, environmentalist protests started in the park. Another common concern was that public recreational areas as well as forests are demolished as a result of the arrangements between the government and groups within the business sector. The movement was commonly named “Occupy Gezi,” saluting its predecessors. The police harshly crushed the peaceful protesters. People were injured and killed as a result of compressed water, plastic bullets and tear gas attacks.
This news was not easy to follow. The mainstream media refused to give sufficient coverage of the state terror. News channels that would normally cover breaking events live only covered the protests briefly. The coverage was sterile and did not focus on the asymmetrical force used by the police. People have had to search for alternative news sources to reach reliable information. The social media, once more, turned into an invaluable source. People shared names of channels that covered the protests and the police reactions. Many people followed the news from Halk TV or channels streaming over the internet.
The protests spread to other cities, Ankara and Izmir being two of the most prominent ones. Even within the cities, protests have varied in their emphases. What is for . . .
Read more: When a Park Is More than The Sum of its Trees: Protests in Turkey
Friday, May 31st, 2013 By Timo Lyyra | 
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)
Thursday, 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
Tuesday, 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
Friday, 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
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