But this fussiness is part of a larger yearning for control altogether, which is where the anti-modernism comes in. Food has long been not only a means of forging and asserting cultural identity but of resisting the onslaught of a homogenizing, enervating modernity that threatens to dissolve not just cultural identities but individual identities. From the health spa/retreats of the Kellogg brothers and their peers (that gave us corn flakes and granola) to the popularity of Sweet-n-Low in the ‘50s and ‘60s to the communes of the hippie era to the herbal remedies of today, food has been seen as a way to “get back” to a more “natural” way of life – as opposed to the high-stress, low-community, detached and distracted way of life that is modernity.
None of this is to suggest that there are not very real food allergies – it’s hard to argue with anaphylactic shock. Nor, more importantly, is it to say that the 98% of food allergy sufferers in the study with no medically detectable food allergies do not, in a very real way, suffer. The bodily manifestations of the most obviously social disorders can still drastically limit a person’s quality of life.
What it does suggest is that treatment of food allergies needs to go much further than antihistamines and food avoidance to encompass the cultural psychological. If control is a central issue – as it is already recognized to be in anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders, which strike bright, ambitious young women with overbearing parents hardest precisely because they are the least in control of their lives and the most aware of it – then a) developing non-food strategies for regaining control, and b) developing a realistic relationship with the demands and pressures of daily life are also important to individual adjustment.

— Food Allergies and Modern Life

The fact that we are all racist already, whether we like it or not, is the point that the manufacturer completely misses. They do think in that way. We all do. Not thinking in that way consciously doesn’t mean that racism didn’t play a role in the manufacturing of a black Lil’ Monkey doll. In fact, their defense actually makes things worse. Their refusal to think about racism, in favor of a defensive reaction, is as racist as the doll itself. We can’t fight racism unless we’re prepared to admit that we hold unconscious biases.

— Black “Lil’ Monkey” Baby Doll

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

— DFW from E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction [via]

Lazy misogynists fetishize evo-psych, and thus they compulsively wank to the idea that hunter-gatherer societies were built around Men of Action and Women of Submissive Servitude—because that means it’s human nature, and that means feminists and gender-queers are indeed the nefarious harbingers of the unnatural, the unorthodox, the aberrant totems heralding the downfall of humankind that misogynists claim them to be.

— Apatowcalypse Now: Dawn of the Dudebros [via]

In a sort of absurd hierarchy, a correlation was drawn between the economic success of the colonial powers and their purported cultural superiority. Such theories, like a feverish, unhealthy urge, tend to resurface here and there, now and again, to justify neo-colonialism or imperialism. There are, we are told, certain nations that lag behind, who have not acquired their rights and privileges where language is concerned, because they are economically backward or technologically outdated. But have those who prone their cultural superiority realized that all peoples, the world over, whatever their degree of development, use language? And that each of these languages has, identically, a set of logical, complex, structured, analytical features that enable it to express the world, that enable it to speak of science, or invent myths?

— Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio - Nobel Lecture [via]

I didn’t say black people commit more crimes than white people. The phrase I used was “…absurdly disproportionate amount of violent crime…” And it’s a well established fact
…I voted for Obama, I think he’s great. You seem to be implying that I’m racist. I’m not - I believe that black people, white people, Asians, Semites and whoever else are all more or less genetically identical. However, there are CULTURES that are inferior to other cultures in the sense of producing and fostering more violent crime and negative social effects. I submit that the African American subculture in the USA is one of those. Another one is the Arab culture of violence and subjugation towards women.
I’m not all “white power” - I judge a culture not on the color of its adherents but on its effects on the populace, and I can’t understand why it’s not more commonly done.

— Duran commenting on FAIL[ING] TO UNDERSTAND WHEN NON-WHITE PEOPLE DISTRUST THE POLICE

Analyses of ‘postcolonial’ societies too often work with the sense that colonialism is the only history of these societies… Colonialism did not inscribe itself on a clean slate, and it cannot therefore account for everything that exists in ‘postcolonial’ societies. The food, or music, or languages, or arts of any culture that we think of as postcolonial evoke earlier histories or shades of culture that elude the term ‘colonial.’

— Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 20-21 [via]

LPTJ jumped off the commenting-on-mainstream-popular-culture train shortly after our “Ignition (Remix)” piece, since “Ignition (Remix)” seemed such a clear & genuine high-water mark, after which all American popular culture would surely decline gradually into ruin. And indeed, there hasn’t been much since to suggest we were wrong. Most counterexamples you can cite are also going to be R. Kelly songs anyway.

— Let’s Be Clear About Something

Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon’s The Wire was “the best TV show ever broadcast in America”—not the most popular but the best. The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been aptly been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. These comparisons attempt to get at the richly textured complexity of the work, its depth, its bleak tapestry of an American city and its diverse social stratifications. Yet none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling “show” on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will explore these comparisons, analyze episodes from the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons and try to discover what was and is so great about The Wire. We will screen as much of the series as we can during our mandatory screening sessions and approach it through the following lenses: the other writing of David Simon, including his journalism, an exemplary Greek Tragedy, Dickens’ Bleak House and/or parts of Balzac’s Human Comedy. We will also consider the formal tradition of episodic television. Please come to the first class having already viewed all of season one on your own. It is available at the MRC.

— What so great about The Wire?
Film 105
Instructor: Linda Williams
W: 3:00pm - 6:00pm, 226 Dwinelle
Enrollment limited to 20 [via]

I never get to take these ‘quirky’ and ‘timely’ courses. TOO BAD YOU REJECTED ME UC BERKELEY DON’T WORRY I AM NOT STILL IRRITATED ABOUT IT OR ANYTHING.

Then I could be taking this RIGHT NOW instead of reading Durkheim. All this semester I have been thinking “Hey, maybe instead of reading about protein energy malnutrition or whatever, I should just watch The Wire. Try incorporating that into anthropology already!” Clearly I am on the right page.

If I told someone I rode the bus, they would assume I was either joking or was on some sociological do-gooder mission to see how losers live. This kind of attitude becomes a near-insuperable barrier to change. Grown-up people I knew in Tucson truly believed that it was “impossible” for them to ride the bus. Not only did they not know how it could be done, where the stops were or how to get a schedule, but it struck them as a physical impossibility—they would just as soon jump off the roof and start to fly to their destination.
But the independence implied by the car way of life, the class privilege it seems to codify and attribute to our own pluck or inborn entitlement, is illusory, since in reality, of course, it requires a massive infrastructure to allow us to get our motors running and head out on the highway. Politics must direct public funding in that direction, presumably at the expense of more social and collective modes of transit

— Lonely in traffic [via]

As someone who rides the bus on a regular basis, there are still some lines that I find it to be a physical impossibility to catch. But, that isn’t what this is about.