I look at the practice of democracy not so much as a fixed set of procedural requirements, but as a process that needs to have certain kinds of symbolic markers and consummations that define where people are in relation to each other.
The shaping and conditioning of our self-understanding by consumption is one form of the commodification of self.
Is it true that there's nothing wrong with commodification that fair terms of social cooperation cannot cure?
Those committed to human rights at the global level should seek not to universalize the particular but rather to particularize the universal.
How America has long viewed China exerts no small influence on which path Washington will follow in its material and cultural relations with the People’s Republic.
The author’s interpretive framework truncates the narrative by forcing her to see thick cultural issues only through the lens of social class.
Economies of dignity shape what people talk about and how people talk about others.
The ideology of the pure gift is not foreign or extraneous to the monetization of relationships.
Poverty research has become caught up in a paradox of its own making—of diminishing insight into the problem of poverty amid more data about the poor.
We can be sure that, religiosity being constitutional in human and social terms, religion has survived.
Capitalism has been a form of enchantment, a metamorphosis of the sacred in the raiment of secularity. With money as its ontological marrow, it represents a moral and metaphysical imagination as well as a sublimation of our desire for the presence of divinity in the everyday world.
Mysteriously, biologically, men and women want, or want to want, “the same thing.”
Since 1970, temporary labor has become part of the everyday fabric of work across all segments of society, from the bottom to the top.
The quest for personal authenticity and autonomy in the face of unreliable communities and institutions has become a defining feature of the modern working class.
The solution to the unraveling of the social contract of employment may not be to prop up the ailing traditional job but, instead, to imagine what other forms work lives might take.
The self-made man and the confidence man have existed in dialectical tension down to the present.
Is Whole Foods a kind of morality tale, a story of what happens when a company that started with good intentions gets too big too fast?
In the long run, we all pay dearly for the carefully crafted commercial illusion that we can hold people to standards on a selective basis.
Can neoliberalism’s conceptual structure be traced directly to medieval Western Christianity?
The highly abstract and immaterial phantom economy is inextricable from the “real economy.”
Work is not just an economic matter. Beyond survival, a range of other human values and ideals are at stake.
There seems to be little agreement on what it is that needs sustaining, let alone how we should go about it in practice.
Is modern-day philanthropy a disease in the democratic body politic?
The personal diet has become not only a cult; it has become a political statement.
Distance can breed ignorance of the ecosystems and individual animal lives that feed us.
Both Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey endorse the same belief: that there are only winners and losers.
Could the great size of companies like Apple and Walmart actually be a good thing?
Cosmopolitan liberalism has reshaped international institutions and practices.
It is fair to say that a new economic populism has been rendered impotent by cultural identity markers that shape voting patterns.
Once attacked for rejecting American exceptionalism, liberals now are in almost sole possession of it.
In the words of retired Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, “a people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy.”
In studying Keynes, we watch radical ideas emerge filtered through a conservative sensibility.
Despite obvious differences and contradictions, “we” extended across class and race and stressed our common vulnerability, our interconnectedness, and even a sense of community.
Privilege today still comes with strings attached, but they are different now.
I envision a world in which the increased fragmentation of our media scene leads, over time, to the rise of new institutions that are built on stronger foundations.
What is clear is that the great divisions in our country rest on our different systems of cultural capital.
That may be the real value of the “doctor” title: It is a very useful thing, provided you can make other people believe it is important.
We at Common Place over the past year read numerous articles on issues facing our cities and communities. Here are our favorite reads.
Cities are increasingly being eyed by tech companies for their social dynamism and ability to generate innovation. This will have tremendous consequences for the future of society.
Whole Foods Market is tired of your “whole paycheck” jokes. Recently, “America’s healthiest grocery store” launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign titled Values Matter.
Taylor Swift’s recent trademarking frenzy is another example of how artists are scrambling to maintain control over their work in the face of the digital tsunami.
Is plain packaging for cigarettes a barrier to trade?
It's just not possible to love something that says “be unique, but only as unique as we'll allow you to be.”
Why should we expect that the inner self waiting to be born corresponds to some paid job or profession?
In identifying “the system” as the issue of this election, Trump has managed to find a singular concept by which to encompass issues from wage stagnation to political corruption.
Who will emerge as the new elite from this particular moment’s cast of winners and losers?
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that meat consumption has risen as fewer Americans participate in or even think about the slaughter that allows it.
To measure the Wealth of Nations, you had to inspect the shirts on people’s backs and the shoes on their feet.
As the titans of big tech see it, the reticence to upgrade is nothing less than resistance to progress. But a willingness to upgrade does not benefit customers in the long run.
What if the more successful political commentators on Substack, or music teachers on YouTube, or masters of the podcast interview, began to teach their craft to others?
We are distinctly susceptible to businesses that ingeniously cater to and profit from our greatest vulnerabilities
Like the tenants of the Bishop of Worcester, they know that in a tightening job market they have leverage.
What makes someone a likely Substack star is an ability to cultivate one-way, parasocial relationships with readers.
Western liberal democracy is something worth aspiring to––an optimal destiny, not an imminent fate.