The Postmodern Election and the Sociology of Crimes Against Me

Two disconnected thoughts, because it’s late and I feel like blogging. The first is that earlier today, the Misanthropologist and I were discussing how postmodern this election feels. In particular, the blatant disregard for truth, and self-aware truthiness, of the McCain campaign is a striking embrace of post-modernism. I am reminded, as always, of the Bush campaign official quoted as saying, “We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.” A Republican strategist said something similar, about Sarah Palin:

“The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”

Narratives matter. Truthiness matters. “Facts” aren’t so consequential. When asked about the absurd sex education ad (wherein Obama is accused of wanting to teach kindergartens about safe sex even though the bill he supported would have included education for young kids about sexual predators and how to avoid them), Rudy Giuliani defended the ad by saying that the only thing wrong with it was that it claimed the bill as an accomplishment of Obama’s when in fact the bill did not pass. What a tool. But a postmodern tool. It really makes you miss modernity, or at least, the part where everyone was grasping for truth even as they vaguely admitted their quest would be in vain.

Second, and unrelated, my car was broken into this evening and a case of CDs stolen*, though apparently nothing else. One part of me is, of course, very frustrated (but that part vents on a different blog). The other part reverts to an analytical mode. The event happened while I was in Detroit, but something similar could have happened in Ann Arbor (for example, my roommate’s windshield was broken by vandals while sitting in our parking lot). And yet, the theft happening in Detroit confirms so many stereotypes about the city. It’s almost a stereotypical event (but one that has never previously happened to me), such that it comes equipped with an automatic explanation – “That’s what happens when you go to Detroit.” It makes me also think about privilege – for example, I forgot to put my cd cases in the trunk, or otherwise conceal them, because in Ann Arbor thefts are (relatively speaking) rarer. I also feel odd because, in a moment of worry, I decided to take my GPS with me and not leave it in the car (ignoring, of course, the GPS unit’s box which may have instigated the break-in, I don’t know). As I was leaving, I felt paranoid – my car was in a lit parking lot next to a fairly busy (though not bustling on a Sunday night) bar, frequented by cops**. And yet, the break-in occurred. It’s very strange and more than a little surreal. But yet, also just plain old real.

Bah, now I’m going to go read the German Ideology and try to get some sleep.

* CDs which I thankfully have backups for on two different hard drives and my ipod.
** And the security camera footage showed that a cop car was parked next to mine for about the half the time it was sitting there.

McCloskey’s “How to Buy, Sell, etc. With Words”

So, first update: I found a very fun, relatively new (Nov 2007) history of economics blog. Via that blog, I found a summer workshop on the history of economics, and a speech given there by Deirdre McCloskey entitled How to Buy, Sell, Make, Manage, Invent, Produce, Transact, Consume, Marry with Words*.

Of Blogs and Prelims

I just got back the results of my prelims and I passed – Hooray(s)!

And I couldn’t have done it with all of you (and by you, I mean the sociology blogging community). I would especially like to thank the orgtheory folks for all their suggested readings, and for the conversations explicitly about surpassing 70’s organizational theory and the lack of new phenomena. I actually cited those two discussions in answering a question about the value of 70s organizational theory and why we haven’t moved past it. If OrgTheory were a book, I would offer this quote for its dust jacket: “No better resource exists for the budding scholar of organizations. OrgTheory is the place for insight into everything from the classics of organizational analysis to conference presentations and works-in-progress. A must-read for anyone trying to quickly master the field and enjoy doing it.”

A second shout-out goes to Kieran Healy and his lengthy discussion of MacKenzie’s work, along with the bloggers at Socializing Finance, whose discussions of performativity, politics and science studies really helped ground my answer to a question on Callon and MacKenzie and the connection between performativity and self-fulfilling prophecies.

So, now when I claim that all this time spent reading blogs is actually work, I can almost justify it!

“Too Big To Fail”, Anti-Trust, and Lumpiness in Economic Life

No time for a long post today, but I can’t let the AIG takeover go without some comment. I am wondering what the government’s buyouts will mean for the future of big business in the U.S. For example, is this “Socialism, 21st Century Style”? Or the inevitable result of a government bent on both protecting its citizens from economic roller coasters, and also allowing big business to grow as much as it wants? Suppose we believe that a business can be too big to fail – that is, that any business of sufficient size will be bailed-out to avoid catastrophic collapse. Then, doesn’t the government have an incentive to prevent businesses from reaching that size (or at least, not favor it)? As soon as a business crosses the “TBTF” threshold, the government is forced to assume (with no particular payoff to itself) the role of lender of last resort. As the refusal to bail out Lehman Brothers shows, attempts to refuse this role may or may not be greeted well by anyone (including other failing firms).

So, doesn’t the TBTF problem suggest a policy of rabid anti-trust enforcement? Or, to put it another way: many economic models assume (for the most part) that firms (and individuals) have zero power, that firms and individuals are all price-takers with no capability to unilaterally influence the market. Does the TBTF problem give government a good excuse to act to make those models assumptions’ true? A firm that can substantially alter the market will presumably also be one that is too big to fail.

In general, I think of this as a “lumpiness” problem. Economic life as we know it is filled with lumpy actors but smooth models. This is, of course, an unfair generalization. I’ll let you know how it stands up to further digging into the econ literature.

That RFK Quote on GNP

Whew. Also, Bailouts and the Neoliberal Dilemma

So, it turns out being in grad school is very busy-making. I have had several medium-length post-ideas come and go this week, but I have too busy with school and school-related socializing to do much else. I think things have calmed down a bit now that I’ve finished a presentation (in my science studies course) and generally started to get things settled. In any event, still too busy for one of my epic posts, so here’s a short version.

Markets for Everything: School Attendance Edition

Today’s NYT has a nice little op-ed/news piece on important stories from the last two weeks that no one noticed on account of the conventions. The last piece is the scariest, about the more rapid than expected pace of global warming. Alas, I have no expertise no anything related and thus will sit in my coffee shop and worry, but that’s about it.

The piece that interested me the most, however, was about incentives and payments and socialization and, well, stuff I pretend to be learning about.

Op-Ed Contributor – The Two Weeks You Missed – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com:

PAY FOR STUDENTS Public middle-school students in the District of Columbia have some of the lowest test scores in the nation. So in a pilot program this fall, about 3,000 of them will be paid for showing up at school, behaving well and getting good grades.

The idea of giving students financial incentives is starting to gain traction throughout the nation, with schools in New York City and five states experimenting with cash-for-grades. The district?s schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, says the rationale is simple: ?This is exactly what life is about. You get a paycheck every two weeks. We?re preparing children for life.?

A couple of thoughts. First, I really wonder how well these programs can work now, but I also wonder (idly) how historically specific that effectiveness is. Is it something about this time and place (broadly speaking) that makes this logic of financial incentives being effective in every domain of life somehow true, or true-ish?

Programs in places like Mexico and Brazil that gave families food if their children (frequently focused on daughters) stayed in school have been shown to be pretty effective, I believe, but the benefits there are (perhaps) more obvious – hungry children can’t learn well, and given the choice between going hungry at school and working to buy food, many families chose the latter (to the extent we can call that a choice. But we’re in economics land right now, so everything is a choice.). I wonder how the logic works in DC? Instead of focusing on biological necessity (avoiding hunger), the DC program focuses on the presumed strength of financial motives. To the extent those motives hold, the program might work.

But what message does it sound about education? On the one hand, as someone currently being paid to go to school, I feel pretty starkly hypocritical in suggesting that somehow money taints the purity of education or somesuch. On the other hand, I’ve already internalized the ‘intrinsic’ value of learning/knowledge/school etc. I wonder about middle-schoolers. What happens if the money dries up at some point? Will students, expecting payment in return for their labor (attending class) now refuse to do so? Or will the rest of the system, given a chance to work its magic, socialize them into the cult of knowledge (not meant derogatorily at all) we all love? In any event, I look forward to the retrospective studies in 5 and 10 years where they figure out what these programs actually did.

Lastly, does this quote creep anyone else out? “This is exactly what life is about. You get a paycheck every two weeks. We’re preparing children for life.” I know we live in a capitalist society and all, but sometimes I forget how deep that is. Like, what happened to exploration, wonder, love, joy, etc.? Apparently they are not what life is about.

“The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”

Oh Noes.

I may or may not have just written my first sociology filk. More on this developing story later.

In completely unrelated news, does it ever strike you as weird that the party of values is also the party of market liberalism? What in sociology appears as a never-ending debate (e.g. rational-choice vs. culture, etc.) to the Republicans somehow becomes a single framework for interpreting the world. The Misanthropologist Kelan and I were just talking about the RNC (see here for his take) and how what they say just doesn’t make sense to us, as if all of the presuppositions in our worldviews were simply different. What’s scary is that for a large chunk of Americans, including most Democrats, many of their presuppositions (about, say, the nature of the individual) are much closer to McCain’s or Bush’s than to my own. This is frightening. Anyway, to me it seems like there is a big gulf between values and responsibility, duty, national pride, and community on one hand, and market liberalism on the other. Apparently, others do not much see this conflict.

Brief Updates

First of all, I’m writing this post on my shiny new Ubuntu/Linux desktop, purchased from the awesome ZaReason. So far so good, once I realized that the wireless card came with a physical antenna I had to screw in. The antenna really boosted the signal strength.

Also, Tuesday marked the beginning of school and, in particular*, my first real semester as a graduate student at Michigan. I’m taking social theory, econometrics (in the Econ department), and an introduction to science studies. It rates to be a fun term, and hopefully one without too much work. I’m hoping to make some significant progress on my own research projects (you’ll hear more about them later, I’m sure, although loyal readers will recognize a lot of it). Additionally, I’ve taken on a de facto social coordinator role for the new cohort, helping to organize (so far) a bar night, a karaoke night, and herding people to watch Obama’s speech at a local brewpub (put on by the Obama campaign). It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m hoping to keep it up.

For now though, back to making notes on Hollis’ “Problems of Structure and Agency” in his intro to philosophy of social science. The structure-agency thing is probably my least favorite dichotomy in Sociology. Ugh.

* In particular has been my phrase of abuse ever since the prelims. I think I must have written it at least twice per essay. Yick.