Winter 2009 The Politics of Culture
Contents
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Jon Bailes
PR, Social Control and Revolt: An Interview with Stuart Ewen“Demographics is the enemy of democracy. It transforms the variety of human experience into a raw material for instrumental purposes, perception and behaviour management.”
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Kenneth Couesbouc
Divide and Rule“New media take society by surprise and open up the gates of culture to an up swell from below. New sounds and images take the place of their predecessors, giving another point of view. But each time the process is stopped before it can run its course. Each time the new mode of expression is restrained by the language barriers around nations, and by media control.”
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“Actual political action that aims to change social conditions cannot be eradicated through incorporation – it can merely be made less visible. The question of authenticity is not the issue; instead it is a question of political motivation.”
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“To the extent that there really is cross-class ‘alienation, boredom, and disgust’ in late capitalist society, it is necessary to locate it and link it to the system in the consciousness of different subcultural groups, to show what they have in common when looking beyond image.”
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Ron Jacobs
It’s Not Only Cream that Rises to the Top“Well-read people end up reading materials that not only endorse the thought processes of the dominant culture of consumption and alienation, but are convinced that they are somehow better than those that don’t read. Once again, we return to the question of which influences which.”
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Robert Fantina
Black, White, Male, Female: Political Implications in the US“Mrs. Palin, who supports and apparently even participates in such cruel and barbaric a practice as hunting wolves by chasing them in airplanes to the point of exhaustion, and then shooting them, did not endear herself to the causes many women espouse.”
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Roland Boer
Narratives of Environmental Catastrophe“Warn your audience of the dire consequences of their acts and call on them to change before it is too late. It was and is the favoured mode of fire and brimstone preachers, warning of torments of eternal punishments in hell should we not repent and amend our ways. I wonder whether this is the most effective way to tell the story.”
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“Unless effective pressure from below is brought to bear on the Obama administration and the Congress, the urgently needed economic changes will be geared, primarily, to the interests of corporate America.”
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Michael Barker
Alternative Dispute Resolution or Revolution“Conflict is not the enemy, but instead is the means of promoting justice. Unresolved conflicts that are “resolved” without adequate justice (via ADR and the like) are ultimately the enemy of all humankind, as they help institutionalize inequality.”
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Paul Buchheit
A Culture of Inequality“No one person is so much more talented than everyone else that he should make in one afternoon what a $50,000 per year laborer would make in fifty years.”
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Joshua Brollier
Criminal on Wheels?“The teenager who was arrested will now most likely have a contact card, a police record, and be well on his way to early criminalization that happens so disproportionately to African American youth in the Criminal Justice System. Can you imagine this scenario happening to a white teenager riding a bike on a sidewalk in Oak Park or Wilmette?”
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Little Big Pine
Extraction Industries (Poetry) -
Frank Barat
The War to End all Wars“Have we really become this “bewildered herd” that has lost all common sense and all its intellectual capacities and needs its leaders, elites or masters to tell them what is good or bad? Has any form of scepticism disappeared in today’s society?”
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Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Morality, the Rule of Law, and Leadership“Obama could turn out to be the second coming of Christ, but if he doesn’t hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their crimes and violations, then it won’t matter.”
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“The Likud party charter does not recognize Palestine and will not accept a sovereign Palestinian state. One can only assume that the soon to come non recognition of Likud by the international community should therefore not come as too much of a surprise for most Israelis…”
