But she doesn’t seem to be at anything like a wedding or a graduation now; instead, she seems to be out shopping or walking in New York City.
When is an innovation too innovative?
Watch the video, “Modern Takes on Tradition,” here.
On Nostalgia
“Indeed, it will be argued here that nostalgia is a distinctly modern word, an idea dependent on a way of worlding that is distinctive to modernity….”
Read more.
What’s in a Name?
National Public Radio in the U.S. has a well-known correspondent named Mandalit del Barco — recently (and humorously) voted the best name in public radio. Her name is so well known to NPR listeners that the guys at “Car Talk,” a call-in car repair show, parody it — among the many other fictitious people who staff their show — in their closing credits, thanking their “inventory manager, Mandalit del Barcode.”
But what I find interesting is how she says her own name and what it says about our commonsense view of language and identity. Continue reading “What’s in a Name?”
Selective Cultural Determinism
Did you read our earlier post on using cultural generations as causal explanations? Interested in a follow-up in much the same vein?
On Consistency
Cartoon source.
Show and Tell
A post on the Facebook page for the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) recently caught my eye; it announced a session at the upcoming conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions and read, in part, as follows: Continue reading “Show and Tell”
The Reporter and the Author
It’s been interesting to see Culture on the Edge‘s two month old site cited recently — for example, consider this post below from a Metafilter.com discussion board about one of my own posts on the Aslan/FOX News affair (click to enlarge): Continue reading “The Reporter and the Author”
On Authority
Are You Buying It?
In the post-game commentary about how terribly author Reza Aslan was treated in that online FOX News interview, in the rush by scholars of religion on Facebook to identify with a misunderstood scholar just trying to do his job, and in the backlash now coming out against the way that he authorized himself by trotting out his degrees, one thing seems to be lost: this was a great moment for global capitalism. After all, a book tour (not the thing most scholars ever set out upon, by the way) is designed to do nothing else but sell, and so the interview was just one more moment in a marketing plan. I’m not criticizing it, since many of us have books we hope to sell, but suggesting that we’ve missed the point if we fail to remember that publicity is all both sides in that dance are going for (either to sell more ads on TV or the web or more books on amazon.com). Continue reading “Are You Buying It?”
How…?
You’ve probably heard about the controversies over Johnny Depp’s portrait of Tonto, in Gore Verbinski’s new film, “The Lone Ranger.” Although portraying a Comanche, the character’s “look” is based on a painting entitled “I am Crow” — and the artist is, yes, a white man (as is the the film’s director [of Polish descent], of course, as well as [to the best that I can figure] the Detroit radio men who first came up with “The Lone Ranger” back in 1932 [first broadcast in 1933]). But beyond that, there’s the general problem of how Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans continues to reproduce troublesome stereotypes, such as argued in Salon.com‘s recent article on the film: Continue reading “How…?”