Between the Lines - IV

Drafting the brief intros to the series of this year’s posts I’ve been rerunning this week has been a useful exercise – at least for me. It’s encouraged me to express more clearly the philosophy behind the blog viz –

-      Reflective – taking distance from “current affairs”

-      Sceptical

-      Open – to deeper analyses

-      questioning the nature and effects of (social) media 

It’s interesting that the blog has taken recently to using the title “Whatever happened to??” to explore the sudden (and strangely unremarked) disappearance of a topic which used to be on everyone’s lips… 

We need to think more deeply about who’s pulling the strings of such intellectual fashions 

Today’s batch of posts somehow resonate with me– they may seem a bit fixated on the irrelevance of most books written by social scientists (except generic ones) but this serves only as a contrast with those written by David Graeber whose death has been such a tragedy for anyone with common sense.

 

Post Title - just click the title to get the post	Inspired by	The basic message
whatever happened to governance?	Realisation that no one was talking anymore about what was once a hot topic	did we actually learn anything from this abstract debate of the past 2 decades??
"Governance" as New Kid on the Block	Some material on networks	A reluctant concession that governments actually have to share power
why are political scientists so irrelevant?	Trying to find useful books	Penis envy has made academics in the field of political studies avoid interesting topics which are of public concern
Le Trahison des Clercs	Asking the same question today which Benda did in the 30s	How few good non-fiction books there are
Expectations	Untypically short, almost poetic post	Keep them low
Fiddling while Rome is Burning	Continuing disappointment with non-fiction books	Ban the specialists who have never tasted other worlds
The Americans take no prisoners	US libertarian article goes over the top	and accuses all progressives of being Marxists
Some Advice for social activists	Street protests in Sofia	A great reading list
Links I liked	Includes review of  the “Hope Gap” film; and powerful excerpts from Martin Hagglund’s “This Life - secular faith and spiritual freedom”	This “scooping up” of odd hyperlinks is proving less easy than I thought? Why? Too scrappy?
Why do Economists talk Gibberish?	More people need to take this question seriously	Recommendations for those who want economics explained in clear language
David Graeber RIP	We lose one of our clearest prophets 25 years too early	Most of Graeber’s work can be read online free
Strategies for Governing	My most inspiring book of the decade	We need more skills of statecraft
So Isst die Welt – und musst nicht so sein	I try (again) to explain my fixation on public admin	Most of the literature is useless – a mere handful of books are worth reading
Links I liked	The German model; meritocracy; democracy by lot?	Some great reading recommendations
Another Landmark	The blog hits 400,000 clicks	9 justifications for why blogging is good for you
Crowds and Power II	Another blog invites me to do a guest post about protests in Sofia – and I offer 4,000 words	The title is from a famous book by a Bulgarian émigré written in 1960 and the post looks at the varying success of street protests in the region
Crowds and Power !!!	how the past has 30 years have treated Bulgaria and Romania	Go back to Some Advice for social activists
Whatever Happened to Planning?	A dream; John Friedmann’s “Insurgencies – essays in planning theory”	It’s been absorbed in strategic thinking