Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Hiding Subjectivity in Narrative’s Shadow

In Coercion, Capital and European States, Charles Tilly takes on a twofold challenge: to understand why European states reached the same destination of “national state” form via distinctly different paths, and to validate his anti-narrative, “mechanistic” methodology for the social sciences. The wide scope of the book, both in terms of its thousand year span and its examination of numerous European countries, regions and colonies, provides a synthesized but detailed analysis, and substantial contribution toward understanding the European historical process. In the context of the intellectual tradition of which Tilly was a part, the work provides an alternate account of the dynamics of modernization, perceiving deeply historic roots that unintentionally led to current international power dynamics between states, as well as current citizen relationships to states. The work also stands as “a proposal of how to move ‘beyond the cultural turn,’” as well as a critique of the “big case comparisons” method of historical sociology (Norkus, 2007: 165). The book provides a challenge to understandings of what satisfies the requirements for sociological knowledge, proposing the detailed study of historical phenomenon coupled with a sociological stance that resists the creation of narrative links at the expense of accuracy. In this memo, I want to argue that in spite of the enormous contribution of the book, Tilly fails to satisfy his own objective of elucidating the “why” of European state formation, due to his failure to perceive the interconnectedness of narrative, time, memory, and thus, history. Ironically, although Tilly perceives the embeddedness of story in our social world, even calling for a study of the sociology of story, he does not perceive the futility of attempting to remove narrative, and its subjectivity from his analysis.

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The Importance of Craft in the Corporate Economy

In The Craftsman, NYU Sociologist Richard Sennett argues that Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" misses the point of craftmanship to human social life.  The book is an attempt to breakdown the concept of craft both historically and theoretically, and show how craftmanship is a human need left largely unfulfilled in our corporate economy.  It is difficult to have the satisfaction that comes from making something from start to finish and determining its value and usage in a world where the fruits of our labors are typically separated from individual effort.  The book is helpful at encouraging contemplation on the different elements that comprise the thinking and the physical actions of an individual craft.  However, as a coherent theory of craft, it falls short, and ironically seems to lead directly back to Hannah Arendt's moral concern that the mesmerizing aspect of creating something with hand and head, creates a separation from the "big picture" that allows evil to fester in simple actions.

New York Times Book Review

Review, Interview and Podcast

The End of the “Free” Market (or What’s at Stake Next Tuesday)

If you look at any one of the many maps of the country depicting the likely election results state by state, it's clear that the democrats are ahead.  The most important reason for this is certainly the economy.  After years of a “free market," Reaganomics, "trickle down" approach, the majority of Americans clearly feel that this system is not working. 

In fact, the implementation of Milton Friedman's "free" market economic philosophy has created such great income disparity that we have gone from the middle class society of the 50s to a Gilded Age society of the 20s in the 30 years since Reagan came to power.