plenty of reading
So i found a ton of websites about different aspects of privilege…here’s a few i found interesting.
first, i love robert jensen. here are two articles of his that i read yesterday: White privilege shapes the U.S., and the followup, More thoughts on why a system of white privilege is wrong. Jensen writes a lot of articles about male privilege too, and i’ve really enjoyed all the ones i’ve read. check him out :)
i found two other ones by authors i hadn’t heard of before: Privilege is driving a smooth road and not even knowing it, which was short but good, and also Shinin’ the Lite on White Privilege, which had some excellent history stuff in it.
Finally, on the topic of feminist critique of science, i found one that seems interesting so far: Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. I’ve just read the “Situated Knowers” section so far, but it seemed pretty informative. It reads a little more academicky than the others, but not too bad. I’m still on the search for more :)
Ride hard, ride free
March 29th, 2006 at 14:45 pm
I fear that your blog may be too intellectual for me
I will scroll down to see if you dumb it down for us regular guys…
seems you have been blogging for a while
does blogging make us smarter
or at least more intellegent writers?
I hope so
cause I sound like a simpleton compared to your stuff
thanks for writing
March 29th, 2006 at 21:52 pm
Boas and Bourdieu come to mind, as well as Veblen.
Bourdieu - “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.” (It’s just fun to say, the work was originally satirical but nails western consumption culture).
Veblen - Conspicuous Consumption begets class. Wasteful consumption is a necessary function.
Boas - Early advocate of immersive anthropology over objective anthropology - that viewing as educated white men is distinct from experiencing as the subject.
Why Bourdieu and Veblen? Because they express how wasteful, conspicuous consumption declares class to the external world, and in order to understand the subconcepts necessary to consume per a certain class requires education beyond that aquired through observation. That’s not a correct summary of what they cover, but it’s a general push in the direction of their papers. It’s a fun read, and introduction to modern Communications theory.
March 29th, 2006 at 23:21 pm
Sorry, I got that backwards. The paper by Veblen I just read was meant in satire, not that by Bourdieu.
Veblen wrote it in 1899 and meant it as a raucaus bit of self-jabbing humour. “Oh look at that casual class. How they consume so frivilously and wastefully.” Interestingly, it’s become a gateway to making the modern American middle class seem incredibly transparent.