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).
The research process and serendipity – excerpt from Alison Lurie’s “Foreign Affairs”
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 →
Looting the Ivory Tower: “Managing transition risk”, oil companies and #climate
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 →
Looting the Ivory Tower: “The wicked trinity of late capitalism”
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 →
Serious fun – on using jokes/fables to explain academic and political concepts (cows, au pairs and snow ploughs)
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 →
Enduring academic patronage
"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 →
Networks, webs and Billy Joel, via Alison Lurie’s “Foreign Affairs”
Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs is the gift that will keep on giving, for a while at least.... Here's a great quote “In any social network there are always some people who are as it were ‘friends’ by social compulsion, though if the net fell apart they would seldom or never see each other. It is... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Alison Lurie’s “Foreign Affairs”
Alison Lurie, I've read a bunch of books and feel that I can mention that there are common themes and methods. Her books tend to involve "smart" people, (or at least people with lots of cultural capital, especially around English Literature,) who think that they know themselves very well. Thanks to their knowledge of narratives,... Continue Reading →
Two climate videos, one glaring silence (spoilers – it’s social movements)
Thanks to Twitter, I saw two videos yesterday - one which is very recent, about the so-called "activist industrial complex" and the other from three years ago by the Financial Times, presented by the actress Nicola Walker. Both, in their ways, are good to think with, but perhaps not for the reasons their creators think.... Continue Reading →
Spoof newspaper in the aftermath of Climate Camp (2006)- “Socialist Lurker”
So, there was a trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s for activists to do spoof newspapers - Metro, Evening Standard, Manchester Evening News, Financial Times. These varied in wit and skill, and usually met with, well, injunctions and so forth. But they were entertaining for a moment or two. In the aftermath of... Continue Reading →
