Category Archives: Politics

Intellectuals and their Publics: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Luke Ford

Professor Jeffrey Alexander, a sociologist at Yale, writes in this 2012 book: * Being a public intellectual, in other words, is not just a matter of telling the truth and of being separate and free-floating and truly representing the universal. … Continue reading →

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Watergate As Democratic Ritual

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Luke Ford

Professor Jeffrey Alexander writes in his 2003 book, The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology: * In June 1972, employees of the Republican party made an illegal entry and burglary into the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel … Continue reading →

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Seizing Power Vs Seeking Outrage

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Luke Ford

Ezra Klein writes: In his 2020 book “Politics Is for Power,” Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts, sketched a day in the life of many political obsessives in sharp, if cruel, terms. I refresh my Twitter feed to keep … Continue reading →

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The Four Types Of Politics

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Luke Ford

Stephen Turner writes about models for balancing the power of expertise: * “High politics” is the politics of leaders. It involves agonistic decision making, and, more generally, decision making in the face of inadequacies of comprehension, typically, it is decision … Continue reading →

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Representations of reliability: The rhetoric of political flip-flopping

Posted on June 8, 2021 by Luke Ford

I just encountered a communications academic who’s consistently clear and fun to read — Joshua M. Bentley. His latest paper: “This study used a qualitative analysis of political flip-flops (N = 141) to create a typology of rhetorical strategies for … Continue reading →

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