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How Obama Did It: Fashioning
Victory in the 2012 US Presidential Elections Dennis Phillips
(Mar 2013)
On Tuesday, 6 November 2012, Barack Obama
became the third US president in a row to win a second term in office
when he defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney with 51 per cent
of the popular vote to Romney’s 47.2 per cent. Many pundits
were surprised by the size of Obama’s victory. Two days before
the election polls indicated that Obama and Romney were locked in
a virtual tie. Meanwhile, leaders of the Republican Party, along
with many political analysts, believed Romney had a slight edge.
So how was Obama able to defy opposition predictions of
his imminent political demise and win a victory more impressive,
in many ways, than his spectacular success in 2008?
Passionate Mothering and
its Discontents Julie Stephens (Feb
2013)
In a culture anxious about care and dependency,
it has become very easy to dismiss maternal attentiveness and nurture
as excessive. While in our working lives, no amount of energy and
effort expended at work ever seems enough, for mothers, any passionate
display of maternal care that displaces the centrality of paid work
appears to be ‘too much’. Is it really possible that
the social meaning of a woman deliberately ‘not working’
has changed to such an extent that it is seen as bordering on the
abnormal?
The Wand and the Wizard: Myth
and Meaning in Mobile Media Damien Spry
(Feb 2013)
How are we to make sense of the iPhone? It
has been called a transformative networked multimedia platform;
a fetishised consumer brand; a superlative innovation by a genius
inventor; the ruination of solitude; and the emblem of a radical
shift in the relationship between those who produce media (including
news and games) and those who consume it. Is that all it is? If
we move beyond brand fetishisation and a myopic Western gaze, we
might see a bigger picture of how the smartphone is changing human
lives.
Distance, Concealment and Control:
Politics of Sight in the Workplace Debra King
(Dec 2012)
A new book makes a confronting comparison
between industrial slaughterhouses and other ‘zones of confinement’—such
as nursing homes. In these zones, work that deals with death, decay
and bodily fluids is physically hidden and socially veiled. Those
employed inside them also become distanced from the moral implications
of their work, by time pressure, surveillance and other organisational
strategies. Can a ‘politics of sight’ make this work
and these institutions more humane?
Classical Stoicism and the Western
Tradition Lisa Hill (Dec 2012)
Stoicism is a philosophy of consolation and
self-defence in a troubled world and is perhaps best known for its
doctrine of apatheia which stresses the centrality of duty
and the idea that, through reason and self-discipline, we can attain
inner calm by learning to accept events with tranquillity. But there
is far more to Stoicism than resigning ourselves to the world …
Can Brain Science Tell Us
How to Live? Dominic Murphy (Nov 2012)
If science has shown us that there is no
God, then are we all the product of a blind historical, wasteful
process that means nothing, because there is no purpose in nature
that we are working out? What if science itself, directly,
could tell us how to live, and answer the big questions? In this,
the age of neuroscience, some philosophers think it can.
Gender Difference and the Rise
of Neurosexism Kellie Burns (Nov
2012)
In 2011, a Canadian family was the focus
of an international media furore, when they elected to raise their
child, Storm, ‘genderless’. The family became caught
up in a classic nature versus nurture debate: is gender inherently
linked to one’s sex, or shaped by one’s social environment?
In the past decade, neuroscience has been mobilised on the side
of nature …
Winning and Losing: What Do
They Mean and How Do They Shape our Lives and Society? Andrew
J. Martin (Oct 2012)
Much of life seems organised around competitions,
and winning and losing are signal events. In schools, politics,
work and sport, audiences watch competitors engage in ultimately
unsatisfying striving after esteem, money, power. Is this brutish
and brutalising struggle all there is to winning and losing? Perhaps
not—winning is important for our self-efficacy and losing
is essential for insight into our further improvement. The point
is to compete against ourselves, not others.
Modern American Conservatism:
Content and Contradictions Dennis Phillips
(Sep 2012)
Mitt Romney’s mid-August choice of
42-year-old Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential
running mate guaranteed American voters their clearest ideological
choice in a presidential election in 48 years. Not since Lyndon
Baines Johnson defeated arch-conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964
has the US electorate been asked to choose between two more dramatically
different political philosophies. Let us hope the voters choose
wisely …
The Great Australian Larrikin:
Myths, Markets and Moral Panics Tony Smith
(Sep 2012)
These days, the figure of the ‘larrikin’
is celebrated in popular culture and embraced by politicians, sportsmen
and entertainers as quintessentially Australian. He (and sometimes
she) has a darker past in the form of disaffected youths who roamed
inner city streets, disrupted entertainments, fought with one another
and resisted police attempts at control. Moral panic does little
to draw such young people back into the mainstream, a lesson policy
makers responding to the recent demonstrations in Sydney and elsewhere
could well note …
Why Politics? James Walter
(Aug 2012)
Have you ever considered a political career?
If not, you are in the majority: most of us never seriously consider
this option. Who takes this path, and why? What is the catalyst
of political ambition? Are there characteristic patterns of social,
psychological or professional development that stimulate entry into
politics? If only those with particular qualities embark on a political
career, what does this mean for the performance of our political
elites? These are questions of enduring significance for all of
us …
Do the Politically Conservative
Have More Moral Might than the Politically Liberal? Fiona Kate
Barlow (Aug 2012)
When asking whether something is ‘good’,
or ‘bad’, left wing people ask, ‘is this hurting
someone?’, and ‘is this helping someone?’, and
especially ‘is harm being down to someone who is powerless?’
But is this focus on care and fairness sound? Or is it an immature
and incomplete foundation upon which to build one’s sense
of the moral? Jonathan Haidt thinks so, and his new book on morality
and politics stakes a claim for the superiority of conservatism.
The Good of Gossip and Other
Delicacies Kim Atkins (Jul 2012)
Can behaviours commonly regarded pejoratively—rudeness,
gossip, elitism, sick humour and disrespect—be justifiable,
even morally commendable? How highly should we value manners over
honesty? Reputations over truth? Can removing some species of disrespect,
snobbery and other human foibles from the category of the offensive
and ugly, actually make the world a little more beautiful?
No Kiss and Tell Here: Krupp
and the History of German Capitalism Frank B. (Ben) Tipton
(Jun 2012)
If Nazism was an aberration, however horrible,
then there is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with Germany
or the course of German history. And if this is so, then there may
be room to search for potentially valuable models in the German
experience. Does German business—perhaps even one, very big
German business, Krupp—provide such a model? The author of
a new history of this corporate behemoth thinks so. Ben Tipton is
less sure …
Down Syndrome and Social
Change: The Fragile Nature of Progress Ilektra Spandagou (May
2012)
A child either has or has not Down syndrome
and a diagnosis is definite soon after birth, but the experience
of having Down syndrome is not static. As with prenatal diagnosis,
medical progress has significantly affected the experience of people
with this condition. The same discipline that substantially decreases
the chances of a foetus with Down syndrome being born increases
life expectancy and quality of life of the child after he or she
is born. This does not mean that the politics of reproduction and
of inclusion thrown up by Down syndrome are any less challenging
today.
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