Noteworthy reads from the last week:
"Universities, Mismanagement, and Permanent Crisis," Gerry Canavan
"As every college administration invokes generalized, free-flowing “emergency” as its justification for arbitrary policy after arbitrary policy — all of which need to be implemented now, en toto and without debate, even the ones that contradict the other ones — they are arguing that their management up to now has been so wildly and irredeemably poor that the university has been thrown into total system crisis. And yet the solution to the emergency is, inevitably, always more (and more draconian) administrative control, always centralized under the very same people who took us over the cliff in the first place!"
"Remarkably Modern and Profoundly Religious," Cole Carnesecca
"In Japan, religion significantly influenced Japanese modernity. Japanese modernity didn’t look like Western modernity (which was hardly a cohesive reality beyond its more theoretical construction) because it wasn’t Western modernity."
"Dark Leviathan," Henry Farrell
"The libertarian dream of free online drug markets that can magically and peacefully regulate themselves is just that: a dream. Playing at pirates is only fun as long as the other players are kids too. The trouble is, once adults with real swords appear, it may be too late to wake up."
"Heaven is a Place on Earth," John Gray
"Popular culture contains few, if any, convincing representations of a happy afterlife."
"The Allure of Hyperlocal History," Casey N. Cep
"Arcadia certainly occupies a small niche in the publishing world, but it’s a comfortable one, one that resonates with the full meaning of that word, offering rare nests in a time of endless migration."
"The Failure of Macho Christianity," Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig
"For both PUAs and the hyper-masculine ministry of Mars Hill and its like-minded flankers, the story goes something like this: feminism and its attendant ideological shifts have undermined traditionally male sources of power and dignity; nevertheless, certain anthropological realities (divinely ordained gender differences for the Christians, evolutionary psychology for the PUAs) resist this newly imposed order."
Hedgehogs abroad:
"Revival—Elmer Gantry Returns!," Leann Davis Alspaugh
"Oral Roberts is said to have burst through his front door one day, shouting 'Fix me a steak, I’ve just seen Jesus!' The charismatic televangelist, who died in 2009, had an appetite for fiery sermons and faith healings, but it was his reliance on the collection plate that really aggravated his critics."