By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 15th, 2013 
I recently returned from a very enjoyable and very fruitful week in Paris, combining business with pleasure. I spent time with family, and also enjoyed a series of meetings with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan. We continued our long-term discussions and debates, moving forward to a more concerted effort, imagining more focused work together. His semiotical approach to power will inform my sociological approach and visa versa, with Roland Barthes, Victor Turner, Hannah Arendt and Erving Goffman as our guides. At least that is one way I am thinking about it now. Or as Daniel put it a while back in an earlier discussion: my politics of small things will combine with his analysis of the politics of even smaller things.
We had three meetings in Paris, a public discussion with his media class at Science Po, an extended working breakfast and lunch at two different Parisian cafés, and a beautiful dinner at his place, good food and talk throughout. I fear I haven’t properly thanked him for his wonderful hospitality.
At Sciences Po, Dayan presented a lecture to his class and I responded. This followed a format of public discussion we first developed in our co-taught course at The New School in 2010. He spoke about his theory of media “monstration,” how the media show, focusing attention of a socially constituted public. He highlighted the social theory behind his, pointing to Axel Honneth on recognition and Nancy Fraser’s critique of Honneth, Michel Foucault on the changing styles of visibility: from spectacle to surveillance, Luc Boltanski on the mediation of distant suffering and especially J. L. Austin on speech acts.
At the center of Dayan’s interest is his metaphor of “the media as the top of the iceberg.” He imagines a society’s life, people showing each other things, as involving a great complexity of human actions and interactions, mostly submerged below the surface of broad public perception, not visible for public view. The media’s . . .
Read more: Spring Break with Daniel Dayan: the politics of small things meets the politics of even smaller things
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 13th, 2010
 As the United States reviews its policies in Afghanistan they should pay close attention not only to events on the central stage, but also to small details of everyday life, such as the Afghanistan’s National Woman’s Soccer Team.
A review of our policy on Afghanistan is due this month. As I have already indicated, I think this is a war that is bound to fail if the current logic of engagement does not include a planned withdrawal. The longer American and NATO troops stay there in large numbers with great visibility, I think, the stronger the support for those who fight against occupation. But a rapid and complete disengagement will lead to a battle between the Taliban and the highly ineffective and corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, in which the victor is not known but the victims are the Afghan people.
It is truly a dilemma.
In the face of the dilemma, I think it is important to pay close attention to the facts on the ground. Last week, in The New York Times there is a report on an instance of what I mean by “the politics of small things,” a report on a national women’s soccer team.
They play under great restrictions. Their fathers, brothers and uncles frequently disapprove of their activities. They actually have to practice on a NATO helicopter landing field, because outside the military zone, they are too vulnerable to attack. They take great pride in their physical accomplishments. Most recently, they actually defeated the women’s team of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Khalida Popal, an official of the Afghan women’s soccer federation and long a team member, noted that “We wanted to show them Afghans are friendly people, not like the stupid people they are fighting.”
These women also reveal to us and to themselves the power of Afghan women to fight for themselves against great odds, and the importance of their struggle. And as is the case of other instances of the politics of small things, such as the poetry café in Damascus I discussed in a previous post, Afghanistan with its national women’s soccer team . . .
Read more: The power of Afghan women
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 30th, 2010 
Last night in my course on the sociology of Erving Goffman, we discussed the release of classified documents by WikiLeaks. The students generally agreed with me that the publication was inappropriate and politically problematic. I think actually only one person dissented from the consensus. Given the general political orientation of the students and faculty of the New School, this was surprising. We are far to the left of the general public opinion, to the left, in fact, of the political center of the American academic community. Our first position is to be critical of the powers that be.
Why not disclose the inner workings of the global super power? Why not “out” American and foreign diplomats for their hypocrisy? We did indeed learn a lot about the world as it is through the WikiLeak disclosures. On the one hand, Netanyahu apparently is actually for a two state solution, and on the other Arab governments are just as warlike in their approach to Iran as Israel. China is not as steadfast in its support of North Korea and not as opposed to a unified Korea through an extension of South Korean sovereignty as is usually assumed. And the Obama administration has been tough minded in coordinating international sanctions against Iran, as it has been unsteady with a series of awkward failures in closing Guantanamo Prison.
And, of course, The New York Times, yesterday justified publication, mostly in the name of the public’s right to know about the foibles of its government, and also noted today how the leaks reveal the wisdom and diplomatic success of the Obama administration.
Most of the opposition to the release is very specific. It will hurt the prospects of peace in the Middle East. It shows our hand to enemies, as it embarrasses friends. But my concern, shared with my students is that as it undermines diplomacy, it increases the prospects for diplomacy’s alternatives.
In fact, given the social theorist we have been studying, Goffman, it actually is not that unexpected that my students and I share a concern about the latest from WikiLeaks. Goffman studied social . . .
Read more: WikiLeaks, Front Stage/Back Stage
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