Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

How to Do Things With Words

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

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Can the Subaltern Speak

The article offers a sympathetic critique of the original formulations of multi-local/multi-sited ethnography. The ‘multi-sited imaginary’ values unboundedness and promotes methodological freedom, but it also implies a problematic reconfiguration of holism (on a grander scale). Whereas these formulations were extremely productive in straining against certain methodological rigidities, their very success in breaking down ‘boundaries’ has given rise to new problems in the doing and writing of ethnography. Written from the perspective of a recent Ph.D. graduate and first-time fieldworker, the article suggests we reconsider the value of self-imposed limitations, of boundedness as a methodological tool. What role did the bounded field-site play for its so-called ‘traditional’ practitioners in social/cultural anthropology? What role could it play for anthropologists who have taken on board the precepts of multi-sitedness? Based on a case study from my own fieldwork in Corsica, I argue that we could think of boundedness (paradoxically) as a productive way of challenging holisms and deferring closure. The bounded field-site, rethought as an ‘arbitrary location’, becomes an explicitly ‘partial’ and incomplete window onto complexity.

Arbitrary locations: in defence of the bounded field-site

/pdf/ontology-is-just-another-word-for-culture-motion-tabled-at-22xey0t18k.pdf

Ontology is just another word for culture: Motion tabled at the 2008 meeting of the group for debates in anthropological theory, University of Manchester

Relationship, connection, and engagement have emerged as key values in recent studies of human–animal relations. In this article, I call for a reexamination of the productive aspects of detachment. I trace ethnographically the management of everyday relations between biologists and the Kalahari meerkats they study, and I follow the animals’ transformation as subjects of knowledge and engagement when they become the stars of an internationally popular, televised animal soap opera. I argue that treating detachment and engagement as polar opposites is unhelpful both in this ethnographic case and, more broadly, in anthropological discussions of ethics and knowledge making. [human–animal relations, science, media, ethics, engagement, detachment]

I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat: Engagement and detachment in human-animal relations

Anthropology has been largely absent from the recent explosion of interdisciplinary enthusiasm with hospitality across philosophy, political science, and cultural studies. Yet anthropology's living engagement with hospitality has been far deeper than that of any other discipline. This essay, which introduces the volume, aims to revitalize hospitality as a frontier area of theoretical development in anthropology by highlighting the topic's connections to some of our discipline's most vibrant themes and concerns: ethical reasoning, materiality, temporality and affect, alterity and cosmopolitics, sovereignty and scale.

Resume
L'anthropologie a ete la grande absente du recent engouement interdisciplinaire pour l'hospitalite qui a federe philosophie, politologie et etudes culturelles. Son engagement concret sur cette question est pourtant beaucoup plus profond que celui de toute autre discipline. Le present essai, qui preface le volume, vise a raviver l'hospitalite en tant que zone frontiere du developpement theorique en anthropologie, en mettant en lumiere ses liens avec certains des themes les plus vivants de notre discipline : raisonnement ethique, materialite, temporalite et affect, alterite et cosmopolitique, souverainete et echelle.

The return to hospitality

Introduction: Revisiting Tarde's House, Matei Candea Part 1: 'The Distance that lay Between': The Tarde-Durkheim Debate Reconsidered 1. The Debate, Gabriel Tarde & Emile Durkheim 2. Imitation: Returning to the Tarde-Durkheim Debate, Bruno Karsenti 3. The Value of a Beautiful Memory: Imitation as Borrowing in Serious Play at Making Mortuary Sculptures in New Ireland, Karen Sykes 4. Tarde and Durkheim and the Non-Sociological Ground of Sociology, David Toews 5. If There is No Such Thing as Society, Is Ritual Still Special? On Using The Elementary Forms after Tarde, Joel Robbins 6. One or Three: Issues of Comparison, Timothy Jenkins 7. The Height, Length and Width of Social Theory, Alberto Corsin Jimenez 8. Faith, Reason and the Ethic of Craftsmanship: Creating Contingently Stable Worlds, Penny Harvey & Soumhya Venkatesan Part 2: Quantifying, Tracing, Relating: Fragments of Tardean Method 9. Tarde's idea of Quantification, Bruno Latour 10. Gabriel Tarde and Statistical Movement, Emmanuel Didier 11. Tarde's Method: Between Statistics and Experimentation, Andrew Barry 12. Intervening with the Social? Ethnographic Practice and Tarde's Image of Relations Between Subjects, James Leach 13. Tarde on Drugs, or Measures Against Suicide, Eduardo Viana Vargas 14. On Tardean Relations: Temporality and Ethnography, Georgina Born 15. Pass It On: Towards a Political Economy of Propensity, Nigel Thrift Afterword, Marilyn Strathern

Matei Candea

Papers

Arbitrary locations: in defence of the bounded field-site

Ontology is just another word for culture: Motion tabled at the 2008 meeting of the group for debates in anthropological theory, University of Manchester

I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat: Engagement and detachment in human-animal relations

The return to hospitality

The Social after Gabriel Tarde : Debates and Assessments