Friday, July 23, 2010

Continuing from the last post, another link to CT, to a comment.
Any discussion of welfare states and social democracy would be incomplete without a reference to Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s work on welfare state typoligies, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Here, Germany, France and much of the rest of Continential Europe are considered conservative (corporatist- statist) welfare states, while the social democratic welfare states are found in Scandinavia, and liberal welfare states in the English-speaking world.
If you only talk to your friends, you don't have a wide range of reference. It makes no difference who your friends are.
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.

I've found a few references to him at CT but none substantive. That makes sense, since there's no discussion of culture on the site, or of anything that could used to reflect back on the modalities of the authors. That seems too general to be anything but insult, but it's a fair description.
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The new generation of modernist intellectuals are as willing to make assumptions regarding others' behavior as ever, often by extending to them the optimism regarding capacities they once reserved to themselves. The vanguard have joined the mainstream, still using the discourse and more importantly the mannerisms of vanguardism. Having failed at leadership, having lead only to disaster, they've chosen to follow.
But there are also huge issues here about race and class and national identity. As people start finding out about this App, a huge uproar exploded. Only, to the best that I can tell, the uproar is entirely American. With Americans telling other Americans that Vaseline is being racist. But how are Indians reading the ads? And why aren’t Americans critical of the tanning products that Vaseline and related companies make? Frankly, I’m struggling to make sense of the complex narratives that are playing out right now.
To the best that I can tell she didn't even look. The general lack of sophistication in her writing is almost shocking.

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