Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

Standing nude (c.1912) by Amedeo Modigliani. Despite the injunction against photographs and the watchful attendants, I took this picture at the National Gallery of Australia.    With the instant nostalgia that is only possible with photography, I captured the moment I first laid eyes upon a piece by Modigliani.     

An engaging documentary on the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov . It contains a lot of archival footage of interviews with the man himself and covers topics from lepidoptery to Lolita.   The narrator Stephen Smith interviews Martin Amis and contemporary literary critics to identify the character of the man and the underlying moral message of his Magnum opus .  Though I enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure if Nabokov would have approved : there is a heavy strain of criticism as psychoanalysis, art as didacticism throughout the film.

Yesterday I submitted an honours thesis entitled:   " Discerning Knowers: An Exploratory Study of University Students’ Perceptions of Knowledge Claims ”.  On the final count it was 110 pages long, with twenty two thousand words in total. It changed several times from the initial conception to the final product. I have a lot more respect for people who conduct research,  it is very hard to get at what is happening in the world. Also, now I know the process isn't impossible. Even when I started the thesis there was a large part of me that thought that I couldn't write twenty thousand words; but as it turns out I wrote a lot more that didn't end up in the finished thesis. Perhaps one day, after the comments from the markers and final revisions,  I might put it online or let people read it. For now I'd like to thank my supervisor Dr Karl Maton   and present the thesis abstract bellow for anyone who might be interested. Abstract The main problem thi...

 In short, he so busied himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits.   -  Miguel De Cervantes.

BBC documentary that gives an overview of "two decades of profound change since the invention of the World Wide Web, weighing up the huge benefits and the unforeseen downsides."

'There is no wealth but life'   -  John Ruskin.

The notion of a ‘ public sphere ’, developed in the work of Jürgen Habermas (1974), is an important touchstone for social theorists of democracy and public life.   It has given rise to a critical literature that engages with the concept of a ‘public sphere’ and seeks to assess its historical validity and contemporary relevance. This discussion has developed parallel to wider debates on the public/private distinction, the interrelationship between the public realm and private life , and the organization of public and private spaces.  The present review will group the literature in terms of approach and delineate common points of analysis and areas of contestation, moving onto a detailed analysis of selected texts that can offer guidance for future research on the contemporary utility of the concept of the ‘public sphere’.

  Or, how to deal with writing the literature review chapter of your thesis . 

   “[T]he United States also has undergone a less sanguine transformation: its citizens have become remarkably less civic, less politically engaged, less socially connected, less trusting, and less committed to the common good.  At the dawn of the millennium Americans are fast becoming a loose aggregation of disengaged observers, rather than a community of connected participants.”   - Robert D. Putnam , ‘Civic Disengagement in Contemporary America’ . Putnam’s thesis is that American society has undergone a decline in social capital and civic engagement, caused by a declining rate of generational replacement, technological innovations, spatial reorganization of cities and the growth of suburban developments.  Social capital refers to the networks and social resources people draw upon in their quotidian lives for support, and it has been positively correlated with better health, wealth and political outcomes for individuals and communities....

- Allen Ginsberg

 In the social sciences, the selection of research design and its constituent elements is an important phase of the research process.  The choice of research design is subject to a number of theoretical and methodological considerations.  Within the discipline of sociology, there exists a high level of theoretical and methodological pluralism with competing approaches to the study of society being pursued simultaneously which often gives rise to contention and contestation over the relative value of approaches. While quantitative research has relatively well-established principles of evaluation, appraisal of qualitative research is highly contentious. Carter and Little (2007) have suggested that consistency of research design is an important criterion via which to evaluate qualitative research:  epistemology, methodology and methods have to be internally consistent in order to form a solid research design. Adoption of a particular epistemological stance can affec...

  In contemporary Western societies, since the mid to late 20th century, there have been considerable debates around the status of the family, its perceived decline or transformation into a new historical form. Talcott Parsons’ original formulation of the nuclear family has fallen out of fashion, outmoded by contemporary social trends and criticised for teleological biases that preference one model of family and designate all other forms as deviant and dysfunctional. Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim have put forth their “‘individualization thesis”’ to explain shifts in contemporary society and the institution of the ‘family’ that elevate individuals to the forefront of discussion. The individualization thesis has been widely discussed and misunderstood. Jennifer Mason criticised the individuation thesis on the basis that it “creates a sense of individuals floating free of family ties and commitments”. However, Beck-Gernsheim has stressed that individualization: “does...

See also: - Seduction and Panopticism - Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu.

The role and importance of migration within the British Empire throughout the 19 th century cannot be overstated. Migration during this period fell into two major categories: white settlement and tropical migration. Emigration from the British Isles sustained and powered the expansion of settler colonies, from Canada to Australia and New Zealand. Whilst, tropical migration allowed the Empire to maintain and expand its plantation colonies after the abolition of the slave trade in 1834. Both forms of migration informed British engagement with the world and helped to shape Imperial policy. In the Oxford History of the British Empire , Andrew Porter argued that the British Empire could be divided into three categories; the Empire of White Settlement, the Empire of India and the Empire of the Conquered. The category of Empire that a colony fell under determined the form of government that London imposed or accepted, somewhere between responsible self-government and autocracy...

In the 1832 Report of the Colebrooke Commission , Mr. C.H. Cameron outlined his view that Ceylon represented: “the fittest spot in our Eastern Dominions in which to plant the germ of European Civilization”. Ceylon had been unified under British control between 1796 and 1815, and remained relatively stable throughout its occupation, bar the Kandyan rebellions of 1817-1818 and 1848. Unlike India and the rebellion of 1857, maintenance of British control of Ceylon did not pose a significant headache for the Colonial Office beyond the initial invasion of Kandy. The later instability of 1848 was quickly remedied and provided important lessons for the administration of Ceylon. However, the administrative apparatus of the Island was largely in place by the first decade of the 19th century and further reforms were carried on through the 1830s to the 1840s, remaining the purview of the Ceylon Civil Service throughout British Occupation. Though expanded in the late 1830s, the Ceylon Civil Serv...