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Not long ago I heard a story on “Morning Edition,” the National Public Radio news show, on the order and identity that GPS and maps are now bringing to the Kenyan slum of Mathare (in Nairobi), and on the lives of a group of people there who have formed The Spatial Collective. Give it a listen here — but when you do, keep in mind Alfred Korzybski‘s (d. 1950) much-quoted statement that the map is not territory. Continue reading “The Map is the Identity”
While listening to the radio on the way home from work the other day I caught an interview with Rachel Renee Russell, author of the bestselling series of adolescent novels, The Dork Diaries — the fictional diaries of a 14 year old girl. What caught my ear was the point at which the interviewer brought up the fact that she is African American while her teenage protagonist is not. Russell replied: Continue reading “Comfort Zone”
Steven Ramey’s recent post very nicely pointed out that there is, perhaps, no such thing as an apolitical use of the term “religion.” As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’m a fan of Bruce Lincoln’s definition of religion, which gets at the same idea. Continue reading “Immune Systems”
Interested in Craig Martin‘s thoughts on future directions in the sociology of religion — at least why he thinks some others’ thoughts are sadly inadequate? Click here.
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Discourse sorts our world, as Craig Martin illustrated nicely in a post last week. Identity labels are an aspect of discourse, but they also operate in another way, beyond organizing people. Labels also push people to conform by presenting a normative sense of who they are/should be. Continue reading “When the Labels Don’t Fit”
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In “The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia,” a story that recently ran on Vice.com, Jean Friedman-Rudovsky reports on a series of rapes that took place in Manitoba Colony, Bolivia, as well as the reaction of the community. According to the story, some men were breaking into houses, drugging, and raping women who—apparently because of the drugs—could not remember the event. Continue reading “Tenuous Connections”
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