Thirty years ago I had a Tetris addiction. For those who have come late, Tetris was a very simple (but addictive - did I mention that)) game where you had to move and re-orient different shaped blocks so that they would fall "into place". If a whole row of blocks existed, it would wink out... Continue Reading →
There's a very good paper (with a click-bait headline - "Fuck Nuance") about theory building, abstraction etc. Here's a link to a pdf. And there's a section in it (lots of it is eminently quotable) about Emile Durkheim, the French guy who can claim to be the father of sociology. "Indifferent to fairly representing his... Continue Reading →
I remember reading this in Denmark in 1994 or so. I remember being blown away by it. We knew the shape of the problem(s) inside out by January 1970. And here we are, fifty three years later... Will read this alongside a couple of others and do a group review... #BetchaCan'tWait
From Alison Lurie's magnificent 1984 novel "Foreign Affairs" How much nicer and less boring it would be if we were all still children, Vinnie thinks. Then, as she often does on boring public occasions, she relieves her restlessness by imagining the weight of years lifted suddenly from everyone in the room. The older members of... Continue Reading →
Made a new short video for my "Looting the Ivory Tower" series (important academic articles or concepts translated into plain English) https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1635273839214211072 What do people think (of the concept, of the video)? Suggestions for improvements to future videos, and concepts that could be rendered in 2 mins and 19 seconds (i.e. within the Twitter limit).
Another excerpt from Alison Lurie's brilliant "Foreign Affairs" - this time Vinnie (academic) and her non-academic acquaintance Chuck, who is looking up his family tree... Nice on how research can be a coming-at-it-sideways thing... He had a real productive trip to South Leigh this time, Chuck tells her, putting away two-thirds of the Indian dinner... Continue Reading →
Another day, another top notch academic article, turned into a glib 2 min 20 second video... "Managing transition risk: Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of strategies in the oil industry" [aka Why existing academic concepts fall short of capturing the messy complexity of #EnergyTransition and what needs to be done] Here's the video https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1634577726945329154 This is... Continue Reading →
I have made a short (2mins 19 seconds) film as part of my "Looting the Ivory Tower" series. It's on a new paper in Geoforum - "The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown" by @IliasAlami @JackCopley6 @moraitisalexis Twitter was playing silly buggers with uploading, so... Continue Reading →
We all need better "cognitive maps," as Freddie Jameson called them all the way back in 1984, in his pivotal article "Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism." Cognitive maps are devices that help us orientate ourselves, understand all the blizzards of stimuli, ideas, messages, signs, whatever you want to call them. Those who... Continue Reading →
"At that moment she realized that he had enrolled himself in the class of persons (usually but not always ex-students) who take it for granted that Vinnie will write them recommendations, give them letters of introduction to colleagues abroad, read their books and articles, and take an interest in their personal and professional happiness. Typically,... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 