War As It Has Dominated Our Cultures for Many Many Centuries

1. War and the Culture of Style:

   The topic this week was prompted by Zanni's art project on War and AfterWar as the style of our culture since Beowulf. Zanni did a wonderful piece of virtual art, now in the virtual art space of the Glasgow Center for Contemporary Art. He uses a very disturbing piece of heavy music in combination with the use of Old English language and script to describe headlines in today's world.

   The music is that of a group of Singers from Tuva, in Southern Siberia: Yat-Kha. Instructions for using Zanni's program are listed at Zanni: The Culture of War and AfterWar

   The New York Times photo from which I took off to do the painting above:

   
   Firstview.com
   Tom Ford's designs for Gucci, shown last week in Milan,
   are typical of the new fashions that embrace an American tough-guy image.

   And the story: Macho America Storms Europe's Runways. . . Backup.

2. War and Fine Art:

   Sunday, July 6, 2003. The Work of Hans Burkhardt: Hans Burkhardt and War

   Sunday, July 6, 2003. The Work of Anselm Kiefer: Everything but the Kitchen Sink: An introduction to the Neo-Expressionistic Work of Anselm Kiefer Written By Guide: Andrea Mulder-Slater.

   Sunday, July 6, 2003. The Work of Picasso: Aesthetic Realism and Picasso's Guernica: for Life By Dorothy Koppelman.

   Sunday, July 6, 2003. The Work of Patrick Graham: Pasadena City College's Artist in Residence, 1991

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

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Announcements:

• Sunday, July 6, 2003: Digital Paintings. As I reconstruct the main page for the weekly issue, I sometimes stop to do a digital painting, like There's Something Out There Might Getcha I sprinkle paintings throughout the issue because I like pictures. Sometimes I make them smaller so you have to link to another page to see the full-size version. I do that to save space on the weekly issue main page. My question is this: Which do you prefer? the smaller version on the main page or the full-size version? Remember that sometimes we're tired when we're working on Dear Habermas, all of us, students quite as much as faculty. When I'm tired I like the big paintings. But then sometimes "I just sits and stares" at the painting, and I don't get as much work done. I think we need those breaks. What about you? What would you prefer?

  jeannecurran@habermas.org
  

Essays, Links, and Comments

Theoretical Musings for Us by Us

• Modern Social Theory: Basic

  Culture:

  • Sunday, July 6, 2003: A Frenetic Pace:Multitasking Article in New York Times, Sunday, July 6, 2003, by Matt Richtel. " The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On --- and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism." Backup.

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Culture of Inquiry: Cultures of Inquiry: From Epistemology to Discourse in Sociohistorical Research by John R. Hall. pdf file. Relates modern forms of interpretive sociology to Weber's verstehende sociology, with an emphasis on culture.

  Social Class:

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Alfred Schutz: Unexamined Assumptions and Neglected Questions in Social Mobility Research by Trevor Noble.

  The Social Definition of Crime:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Plagiarism: Backup of Did Bob Dylan Lift Lines From Dr. Saga? Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Backup of a Wall Street Journal Article. Essay and discussion questions up soon. Want to compare this to Jayson Blair and to recently charged historians. What is plagiarism in this 21st Century? jeanne

  Sociology on the Web:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Sites You Should Visit: Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace. At Trinity University in San Antonio. "The department is home to the award-winning Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace, http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl, Web site, one of the discipline’s major and most visited portals." Dr. Michael Kearl, Chair. Department of Sociology & Anthropology.

    • J. S. Goodwin, W. C. Hunt, C. R. Key, and J. M. Samet, The effect of marital status on stage, treatment, and survival of cancer patients JAMA 1987 258: 3125-3130. "The effects of marital status on the diagnosis, treatment, and survival of patients with cancer were examined in population-based data on 27,779 cancer cases. Unmarried persons with cancer had decreased overall survival (relative hazard, 1.23; 95% confidence limits, 1.19 to 1.28). We identified three complementary explanations for the poorer survival of the unmarried persons. First, unmarried persons were more likely to be diagnosed at a regional or distant stage (odds ratio, 1.19; 95% confidence limits, 1.12 to 1.25). After adjustment for stage, unmarried persons were more likely to be untreated for cancer (odds ratio, 1.43; 95% confidence limits, 1.31 to 1.55). Finally, after adjustment for stage and treatment, unmarried persons still had poorer survival. Previous studies have demonstrated that unmarried persons have decreased overall mortality. For cancer, our results suggest that the favorable consequence of being married on overall survival is secondary to the beneficial effects at several steps in the diagnosis, choice of treatment, and response to treatment."

• Modern Social Theory: Advanced

  Jurgen Habermas::

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. The Overall Project: A Critical Introduction By William Outhwaite, Stanford University Press. 1994.Lecture notes, comments and discussion questions included. jeanne

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Knowledge and Human Interests: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory: from Knowledge and Human Interests By Jurgen Habermas. "Source: Knowledge & Human Interest, 1968, publ. Polity Press, 1987. Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory reproduced here." On Marxists.org Internet Archive.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Discourse Ethics: Introduction to Habermas's Discourse Ethics By Robert Cavalier, Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University. See also Online guide to Ethics and Moral Philosophy By Robert Cavalier.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Education: Habermas and Philosophy of Education Nadja Hermann. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. The Internet: The Internet and the Theories of Jurgen Habermas "A sociological paper on the social importance of the internet as evaluated through the theories of Jürgen Habermas." By Adam Perzynski, of the Sociology Department of Case Western Reserve University.

  Georg Simmel:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Habermas Postcript: Georg Simmel on Philosophy and Culture: Postscript to a Collection of Essays by Jürgen Habermas. Translated by Mathieu Deflem> On Universisty of Chicago Research Site. Spring 1996. Volume 22, Number 3. Critical Inquiry.

  Rights Theory:

  A dedication to human rights On the Official String Theory Website. What's string theory got to do with human rights? String theory is an attempt how we can have quantum theory (the theory of very small particles) and gravity (from Newtonian physics) without the contradictions we are finding there. So

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Dworkin and Habermas: The Constitutional Protection of Rights in Dworkin's and Habermas' Theories of Democracy By Cornelia Schneider. pdf file. Remember that Dworkin will be considered with Rawls. Essay and discussion questions later. jeanne

  Family:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Outline for Study: Marriage and Family Processes By Kearns. Brings up some intersting issues and gives a good outline that may help in study for the comps.

  Health:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. The Center for Disease Control: CDC en Espanol Refernce Site in Spanish.

  Sociology in the 21st Century:

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Trends: Social theory at the end of the century By William Outhwaite, School of European Studies, University of Sussex.

  Verstehende Sociology

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Alfred Schutz: Schutz, Alfred He built on the verstehende of Max Weber.

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Max Weber: History of Social Thought. Week 3: Max Weber: Verstehende Sociology Lecture outline.

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Definition of Verstehende Sociology: Weber and Yoga By Georg Feuerstein. Has a good defintion of verstehende sociology at the start.

  Restorative Justice:

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Papers from 2002 Conference: Conference papers online from the The Third International Conference on Conferencing, Circles and other Restorative Practices: "Dreaming Of A New Reality." August 8-10, 2002. Browse while they're still online. No backup. Too much material.

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Alienation in Democracy: Democracy, Community and Problem Solving John Braithwaite. The Australian National University. International Institute for Restorative Practices "In the historical period when representative democracy is sweeping away one dictatorship after another, democracy is becoming more shallow in its meaning for human lives. The lived experience of modern democracy is alienation. The feeling is that elites run things, that we do not have a say in any meaningful sense." Backup.

  • Monday, July 7, 2003. Everyday Life: Restorative Justice in Everyday Life: Beyond the Formal RitualBy Ted Wachtel, President. International Institute for Restorative Practices, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "We define “control” as discipline or limit-setting and “support” as encouragement or nurturing. Now we can combine a high or low level of control with a high or low level of support to identify four general approaches to social control: neglectful, permissive, punitive (or retributive) and restorative." Backup.

  Visual Sociology:

  • Sunday, July 6, 2003. Conference Abstracts: Abstracts from the International Visual Sociology Association Conference on July 8 - 10, 2003, at the University of Southampton, in the UK. I know we can't be there, but you might find topics you'd like to follow-up on from their abstracts. Backups are provided for future years when the conference abstracts may no longer be up on their site. Backup Tuesday . . . Backup Wednesday . . . Backup Thursday . . .

  Writing:

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Citing References: APA Style: Electronic References

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Citing References: ASA Format American Sociological Association.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Finding Library Resources: Library Instruction:Sociology of the Family Franklin Pierce College Library. Some good suggestions here for library searches.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Finding Library Resources: Sociology of the Family, Spring 2003 "Library Instruction Program - Research and Instructional Support. For more information about this topic contact Michelle Harrell.

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2003. Evaluating Web Pages: How to Evaluate A Web Page

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Lived Experience: Emancipatory Narratives

• Monday, July 7, 2003. The Mutuality of Learning: Teaching and Learning in Circle By Greg Lewis. From a session presented at "Dreaming of a New Reality," the Third International Conference on Conferencing, Circles and other Restorative Practices, August 8-10, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota. "To truly listen is to risk being changed forever." - Sakej HendersonBackup. How can the concept of sharing and supportive cooperation work in the competitive school environment most of us endure today. Here's how. Or at least one how that might work. jeanne

  
  The Yat-Kha Singing Group of Tuva

• Sunday, July 6, 2003. "Other" Lives: The Yat-Kha Singing Group of Tuva in Southern Siberia. This group does the backup singing for Zanni's Project using the script and language from the time of Beowulf. Zanni's translation takes us back in time. This group takes us into remote spaces. The Yat-Kha site tells the story of each member of the singing group. What a different perspective of lived experience!

Art Shenanigans

• Wednesday, July 9, 2003. Empathy: Sometimes it's easier to say what we're feeling without words. jeanne
  

  Empathy: Arnold, Sad
  Link on image for larger version.

• Saturday, July 5, 2003. Abstract, I Think. This is probably one of the pieces I should label Untitled. The mosquito-like creature is iconography for illness, particularly illness through allergies and toxins in the environment. "Oeuvre" is French for "work," and "pensee" is French for thought. I guess it means that even rationality, objectivity and science can't overcome some of the things out there that might getcha. If I stare at the mosquito-like creature the color effect on my machine can make him look 3-dimensional.
  

  There's Something Out There Might Getcha

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  Well, actually there are lots of things out there might getcha,
  like Carlo Zanni's new art project:

• Friday, July 4, 2003. The Culture of War and AfterWar: Epic Tales By Carlo Zanni. Note the music, especially, it's low information, it's throbbing intensity. Link to USA West Coast to pick up the nearest server. Read Zanni's description of the project, and then paste this URL into the dialog box at the top of the page: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/zannismpl01.htm See how Zanni's program transforms the page.Then link to the examples he provides at the end of his explanation: 1, then 2, then 3. The numbers are active links. As you link to each one, a new window opens up for it. When you are ready to link to the next one, close the window (x in the upper right hand corner) and you will be returned to Zanni's instruction and description window. Then just link to the next one.

  I'm sorry. The only way I can get Zanni's project to translate our homepage into the old English script is to do this within my html program. The words translate, but not the script.

  I got it! The script only works with Internet Explorer. Switch browsers to Internet Explorer, then link to Zanni's Project Select USA west. Then paste an URL for example: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/zannismpl01.htm into Zanni's dialog box at the top of the page. Press Fight for the Standards to start the program. Try it again with http://www.habermas.org Experiment. Be sure also to look at Zanni's examples by linking on 1, 2, 3.

  Now the sound's off on my Internet Explorer version. Dear me, working at the edges of technology can be frustrating. Mess with the browser till you get the sound - don't miss the music. I put Zanni's project up on Netscape and played the sound, and then put it up on Internet Explorer and got the script. Hey, it worked! Techs out there, help welcome! jeanne

  If you have access to both browsers, which we do have in my office, compare the results you get with each. Best way I know to understand how browsers affect communication on the Web. jeanne

  See Interactive Art: War and AfterWar for more extensive explanation and conceptual linking. jeanne