They are supposed to be SOCIAL movements, not personal ones: Of McNulty, metrics and #MeOnly

Warning - incoherent-and-dashed-off-when I-should-be-thinking-and-writing-about-Something-Else rant Measuring "success" of social movements is notoriously difficult. Did a law get passed? Repealed? Did social attitudes change? Over what timescale? Who did what to what effect? Or did things change BACK, or not change (not all social movements are 'progressive'!). And on and on. But sometimes an organisation comes... Continue Reading →

April 26, 2022 0

“Assume the position”! Of Gramsci, “transitions” and how someday our modern prince may come (but too late)

tl:dr - Two academics have written a good "here's how Tony Gramsci can fill in some of the major gaps in the MLP and maybe make it useful" article. On the downside, it's probably only particularly accessible to folks who know their Gramscia and their sustainability transitions stuff. The article is called "Regime resistance and... Continue Reading →

July 1, 2021 0

Worse-than-useless documentaries about “activism” – the why, the how, the what instead

We are allowing ourselves to brightside ourselves. FFS This is no better than the fucking gaslighting by those who would have us sleep through the apocalpyse. [Sweariness warning. I am trying to be more Omar - not the killing people bit, but the not cussing. Today, I'm failing. If that means you can't fucking share... Continue Reading →

October 24, 2020 0

Obama, Trump, Omar, Levy. The game…

I am no fan of Trump, obvs. But this emoluments thing, about him crassly (and everything about the Donald is crass) enriching his family and business through the POTUS gig. Everyone is losing their shit about it, but when Obama gets a gig to give a speech for 400k for it people were slightly less bothered. If I... Continue Reading →

May 20, 2017 0

“Bel-Ami” – brilliant brilliant book about journalism, life, image, etc

How did I not know about this book? Why was I not told? Eh? This is up there with The Wire as "cultural artefacts that everyone will have to engage with when I am chief fascist dictator". It's by Guy de Maupassant, a French writer (mostly of short stories) who died from syphilis in the... Continue Reading →

February 14, 2017 0

Bateson, schismogenesis, etc and The Wire…

So, am reading about Institutional Work. And stumbled on an article that used the best television show that I ever saw ('The Wire') to talk about this and a LOT else. Not sure how I will be able to use it in The Thesis (concept of fields, relentless contestation that changes the actors - and... Continue Reading →

December 31, 2016 0

All in the game, you feel me?! Academia and The Wire.

Come hell or high water, this is getting cited in The Thesis. Zundel, M., Holt, R., & Cornelissen, J. (2012). Institutional work in The Wire: An ethological investigation of flexibility in organizational adaptation. Journal of Management Inquiry, doi:10.1177/1056492612440045 Analysis of institutional work is habitually complicated by the need to combine agentic and structural features. Drawing... Continue Reading →

December 28, 2016 0

From “The Wire” to “Heresthetics” – the game is rigged….

The game is rigged, you feel me? (At this point the wife will point out that I am not, in actual fact, a black man from B'more... Sorry "Baltimore"). Anyway, back to game rigging- the word for the day is "Heresthetics" William Riker was one of the leading scholars "positive political theory," or the Rational... Continue Reading →

May 28, 2016 1

Brilliant satire and observations of the games of academia/science

"The first step is to create a task force to develop a proposal for funding for a workshop as a preparatory step toward a conference. Once you get funding for a workshop, you’re pretty well along for getting funding for a conference, because the workshop can compile a list of problems that the funding agency... Continue Reading →

January 16, 2016 0

Juking the academic stats – the ivory tower game explained.

Is it possible to be cynical enough? That’s one of those questions I ask myself occasionally (daily/hourly) and usually when I begin to chide myself for corrosiveness, along comes confirmation/warning that I haven’t even got to cynicism basecamp. The latest timely warning is "Ring a Ring Roses: Quality Journals and Gamesmanship in Management Studies." This... Continue Reading →

May 3, 2015 0

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