Whenever an item on the internet catches my eye, I copy its url and transfer it to a special file which has now grown to 40 pages. Time therefore to share some of these treasures with my readers - I've grouped them thematically – thus
Good Writing
Central and Eastern European
The Nordic Model
Social Scientists
Good Writing
First a confession – I’m not familiar with the novels of Cormac McCarthy who died last week but he was, apparently, a great word artist and his obituaries certainly tempt me to check that out. The only connection I have with his work is the Ridley Scott film The Counselor which I watched a decade ago in a Sofia film theatre and which impressed me.
At another level, I was excited to download Edward Said's "Reflections on Exile and other Essays" which shows a completely different side of the man than the earnest enemy of the West shown in "Orientalism" - with its 46 vignettes of figures ranging from Foucault to Hobsbawm.
C Wright Mill’s “Intellectual Craftmanship” is a favourite of mine for the pedagogical insights it contains and this is a great commentary from one of the most wonderful of sociological sources
and finally this Romanian who recently edited a fascinating journal (called DoR) has been developing a profile with his blog which takes me nicely on to
I write from Romania about whose political culture I often comment. But the country is simply one of many which are subsumed under a label which is, apparently, losing its meaning
- "The Idea of Central Europe – geopolitics, culture and regional identity" by Otilia Dhand 2018 is an interesting recent book which explores the history of the concept
- From Peoples to Nations - a history of East Europe by John Connelly (2020) is a long-overdue treatment of the region. But be warned! It's 967 pages long
- "Central Europe – imaginary geographies, geopolitics and security" is an article which emphasises how the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 spread disillusionment with the EU in countries such as Poland and Romania.
- "The Curse of the Margin – central europe before and after communism" is another effort by a central european to make sense of events.
- Anticipations of the failure of communism is an extended essay from 1994 by the famous american sociologist SM Lipset as he attempts to answer the question why social scientists failed to anticipate its collapse
The NORDIC MODEL moves the geographical focus north to Scandinavia and tries to explore whether the Nordic Model is managing to live up to its myths. The Nordic model is a 2007 publication from economists from the region. This article from Jacobin suggests that Norway was, in 2021, still on track but other reports paint a darker picture.
Social Scientists Look Ahead. In 2019 I paid tribute to clutch of social scientists who had got together to form the International Panel for Social Progress. I have since discovered a whole range of other work they have done
https://www.ipsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IPSP-Executive-Summary.pdf
https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/GSJ9_Summit-2023-Edition.pdf
https://www.ipsp.org/download/chapter-13 communications
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg8mu2-mJj4
The multiple directions of social progress https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/161102602.pdf EO Wright et al
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