Tressie McMillan Cottom "Lower Ed": Book Review

 

Having worked at two for-profits, then attaining her sociology doctorate writing on this cohort, Tressie McMillan Cottom carries the "credentials" needed for her examination of a sector comprising over 10% of recent college students. Expanding her dissertation, it is the first in-depth study beyond academia that I am aware of, that covers more than default rates on loans, corporate models, stockholders, or legal ramifications. (She addresses these). Dr. Cottom interviews over a hundred people within this market-funded industry. "These shareholder for-profit colleges are the institutions whose tuition rates appear to be pegged to maximum student loan limits, arguably to extract as much profit from students who can borrow the most because they have the least amount of assets and the fewest college choices." This is a factor that might be attributed to non-profit private colleges too, or nearly so, given perpetual tuition increases. Still, one aspect that Cottom elides is the actual cost of educating a student at a for-profit vs. a traditional institution. For-profits claim that state institutions receive taxes, private ones enjoy endowments, and both elicit alumni donations, unlike their own sector. 18% of their budgets go to "instruction" and 23% for recruitment. "The risk for changing jobs and moving up the professional ladder has shifted to individual workers across race, class, and gender. That risk makes credentials valuable only insofar as those credentials are easy to start, easy to fit into complex lives, and easy to pay for. For-profit colleges nail that trifecta for millions of people who are similarly vulnerable in this new economy of risk shift." She seems spot-on here, but professors merited more. "Visiting faculty" frequently work at for-profits and traditional institutions, at multiple locations. What's the impact? Cottom labels this product as "risky credentials." She overlooks results: how do employers, or graduate schools beyond the for-profit's own, regard such degrees? Are they respected? "Fundamentally, institutions that can turn inequality into profit even when we, citizens and persons, would agree that it is immoral for them to do so provide a far more interesting and powerful account than the impact of any single actor. This, I conclude, is the case with the troubling rise of Lower Ed." These ethics invite debate. Assuming nobody is rejected who can come up with a way to pay, and as tuition is linked to the maximum (usually as not grants but lucrative loans, boosting any provider's prospectus) amount the government (i.e. taxpayer) funds, is this immoral? Trade school lobbyists counter they serve marginalized millions.         The pressure to finance a certificate or degree means that already strapped and overwhelmed students comprise and invest in themselves within a compliant demographic. One they want to rise above. Students may add to their woes by taking on fees that may add up to as much as an elite school but which put them at a "cumulative disadvantage." Debt hobbles millions. “We are not an admissions office. We are a sales force.” As this testimony from an enrollment division's supervisor attests, potential and present students are customers. Their intellectual potential is almost never mentioned. As to increasingly all-online education; it can't be that more expensive to instruct a large class by remote media. If so, why not explore profit gain? What advantages vs. disadvantages result? Are all degrees equivalent in merit? Do any for-profits improve this model? Are quality control and rigor enforced?    "Cost savings were reserved for investors, never for students, as shareholder for-profit colleges kept tuition rates sufficiently high to extract maximum federal student aid dollars." Here’s the crux. Government financial aid wasn’t set up to benefit stockholders rather than needy folks.       "In the case of the new economy, the labor market ethos is clear: more, better, faster workers produced cheaply at little to no expense for companies and speculators. As the public, we once chose to let shareholder for-profit colleges promise to do just that. The evidence is in on that promise. For-profit colleges do not have employment or wage returns that justify their cost to either students or our public system of financial aid." Few voters realize how this sector took advantage, being a business and not a charity, true, of this production line. Ongoing enrollment and rapid matriculation generate metrics. If this clientele is not catered to by traditional schools, Cottom argues, for-profits will proliferate. Lower Ed appeared while the previous administration sought tougher oversight; said sector fought back in lobbying, and in soliciting students to overwhelm legislators with testimonials. Promotion of job placement rates and levels of income for graduates were examined. A year after her book was written, enforcement ebbed. But this past decade, growth dipped in this sector as traditional institutions diversify. One reliable market pursued is the military, for the financial aid students here receive is not counted under the limit (90%?) that the government caps as a total amount. A loophole used to advantage by many for-profits.      "He could count on easy access to financial aid refunds and an online class structure with an underground economy of coursework that could be bought or borrowed." This aside from a student who "works the system" deserved emphasis. Standardized curricula and textbook-generated exams create "learning opportunities" which savvy students exploit. This aspect is not likely scrutinized by overseers; it's easier to keep lessons basic, for hiring. Faculty can be placed quickly and courses roll out efficiently—mass production at work.      "One of the for-profit colleges’ great disruptions is to the role of faculty, who are rarely expected to be active researchers. Research in for-profit colleges is more likely to fall under ‘marketing’ as opposed to 'academics.”' Few institutions provide physical libraries or labs. Faculty may lack access to paywalled databases. Duties and teaching loads tend to exceed courseloads at traditional universities for "hired at-will" faculty. This sector favors professors who are also active in their fields and therefore non-tenured. Is this hiring a negative or a positive preference?         "How can a college that is honor-bound to extract excess tuition remediate the interlocking, systemic, entrenched, and inheritable conditions of poverty, near-poverty, and inequality?" Excellent question. For-profits may re-brand as education providers or corporate contractors. But moral debate continues. Defenders assert that those left out of traditional education need a leg up. Critics wonder why this assistance comes at a hefty price tag, and who foots this bill.      "Time has become the commodity being traded for institutional prestige." After all, this ambitious audience responds to data-driven recruiters. A schoolteacher takes on debt that can reach hundreds of thousands for an online advanced degree. This risk of expense is trumped by the accelerated, incessant open enrollment, and the chance that such degrees will meet with the acceptance rates equivalent to selective schools. That student's gamble is why for-profits extend their offer to invite customers to the degree-gaming table. (Amazon US 9/20/17 in slightly different form--sorry about the paragraphing or lack of above in transition to this blog)

David Palmer + Elijah Siegler's "Dream Trippers": Book Review

Daoism, unlike Hindu and Buddhist faith systems, has not yet been studied seriously by many in the West. Until the dawn of the last century or so, very few scholars knew much about its texts, rituals and customs over its long history in China. During the past dozen years, professors David A. Palmer and Elijah Siegler investigated the spread of the Dao and its practices in "transnational circulations."

Dream Trippers stands for those from Healing Tao USA, seekers visiting the sacred mountain site of Huashan, "Flower Mountain." There, they meet with monks and mix with throngs of secularized Chinese tourists. For these two scholars, the "water" of Daoism sloshes in and out of its "institutional container," as Eastern and Western fluidity wash aside facile dichotomies and stereotypical binaries.

A third presence triangulates with these two Daoist groups. Louis Komjathy, a West Coast-based religious studies professor, insists upon a far more bookish, scholarly and faithful adherence to a demanding regimen which, in this American-born academic's estimation, the Dream Trippers dismiss.                                                                                                                                               Complicating matters, monastic master Chen Yuming leaves Huashan and those pilgrims who had depended upon him for guidance. Palmer and Siegler narrate the "anxieties" generated by the "predicament" of global spirituality through its "encounters, flows, and appropriations" of the indigenous traditions as they return to the motherland "Americanized." Through tours, marketing and networks, the Dao's adepts and aspirants follow "trajectories" as subjects within late modernity.

Adopting Zygmunt Bauman's post-modern critique of the self-improvement Esalen/ Human Potential movements which the 1960s counterculture promoted as a consumer commodity, the authors situate these various representatives of Dao, as a fresh product shared and sought recently beyond East Asia. As Chinese autonomy dwindles in the homeland of the Dao, American ambitions increase among the pilgrims coming to Huashan to accelerate their immersion into qigong (vital energy practice).

But factions resist easy categorization. Western does not equate with anti-traditional, nor does any authentic Chinese experience trump any fabricated New Age-tinged experience. Palmer and Siegler respect all the participants whom they observe in Huashan, beginning in 2004. They witness the massive tourism overwhelming Huashan as the corrupt regime markets its dramatic vistas and quaint monks as lucrative attractions for a burgeoning base of eager novelty seekers from within a freespending China. Those eroding the Daoist legacy come not only from abroad, but within a cynical state calculating a pro-Daoist turnabout as countering the burgeoning Christian presence throughout the PRC. Many of the monks are unsuited for the rigors of their life, and loaf as "temple rascals." 

In thematic chapters, Palmer and Siegler compare the Dream Trippers as "metaphysical travelers" to the monastic system struggling to sustain itself as Huashan's slopes fill with Chinese crowds. The Westerners value therapeutic methods channeling the power of the Dao and the complicated "inner alchemy" developed over two millennia ago; Easterners come and go for the very vertiginous vistas.

This book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists of religion, and religious studies professors and students. While Palmer and Siegler commendably avoid jargon, and offer a detailed index and glossary, they expect their audience to possess familiarity with postmodern theorists and thinkers.

One under-examined aspect is the wider impact of the Dao on contemporary popular culture; references direct the inquirer to sources, through documented end notes and a broad bibliography. A general reader will gain value from this in-depth look at a novel predicament created by the global reach of a faith-system which until recently has mostly been relegated to (often woefully inaccurate) translations of the Daodejing and the tales of Zhuangzi when it comes to shelf visibility abroad. 

No pure legacy remains in Huashan. The rupture caused by communist devastation of religion has eased, but it has left behind a weakened heartland for the Dao. Yet the authors regard this communal evolution with equanimity. "Simply another wave" of many meetings between East and West characterizes the broad view taken of Asian reactions to the West, and vice versa. A "back and forth" pattern of outer forms adapting to each era exists within this religious discipline. Pursuits elevating the mind and energizing the body link enthusiasts from affluent professions and nations. Palmer and Siegler assert real connections, however brief, bonding the visitors with those dwelling on Huashan.

Louis Komjathy opposes this benign judgment. He denies that Daoism suits the likes of the Trippers.

A diligent exegete, his textual study grounds his everyday life as a Daoist, heir to a priestly lineage. Combining an introspective pursuit with a teaching career, he responds (as do others interviewed) to the authors by claiming fidelity to the Chinese contexts. This, lacking in callow New Age itinerants, disqualifies for Komjathy any who traverse the "spiritual marketplace" browsing fake commodities. Michael Winn, founder of the Trippers, begs to differ; the authors hear all sides out and report fairly.

That predicament, Palmer and Siegler surmise, blends a Western consumer mentality with an esoteric Eastern pursuit. Whether the Dream Trippers embody a cure or a symptom to the present-day "liquid self," lacking once-stable social structures in a hyper-capitalist consumer-driven existence, is left for the reader to contemplate. In a coda, Chen Yuming gets the last word. This sage announces: "The flower has dried up, but the root is alive." As institutional Daoism totters under tourism, a few from all over the world join those indigenous holdouts who agree to pursue virtue and find transformation.

Reviewed for Spectrum Culture. 3/8/18.

Clann-ish

A friend of Irish and Greek descent living in Germany told me today how "we need to rally together and be the keepers of all that knowledge, skills and wisdom that is needed." In a precarious economy, on a weakening planet, and within political change and cultural clashes, I look within for support. Parties fail us, "leaders" betray, and ideologies writhe. Consider the late Fidel. As his rule over Cuba consolidated as opponents were eliminated and dissent crushed, his citizens learned that saying his surname was judged disloyal. So, his first name was used, or instead, a sly gesture of stroking a chin.

So, the outpouring of grief among my leftist friends leaves me unmoved. Hearing stories of flight from that island by classmates and students, the recognition of the health and literacy reforms the Communists brought are tempered with the cruelty exercised against his foes, and innocent people such as gays, a factor little covered in the media now, as are the 500 executed by firing squad soon after the rebels became the rulers. Of course, justifications for these deeds, the broken eggs for the omelette recipe, emit as pro forma replies by the convinced and committed progressives. Fidelity.

This faithfulness joined Cubans despite their privations and losses of freedom against their foes, conjured or real. The strength of the tribe for and against what Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens calls "imagined fictions" enabled our ancestors to break out of their territorial and mental bonds. Then, by religion, trade, and money, ancient peoples formed nations and expanded their hold over others, too.

Imperialism has a bad name, sure. But Harari, balancing the accounts of humanity's gains and losses well in his book, warns us against too arrogant a reaction to our past. He shows the benefits of reason, while warning in his new Homo Deus against the rush to trans-human and algorithmic domination. The cost, he argues, of transferring our humanity into information systems rub by corporations caring only about data, and not consciousness, threatens to count out the irrational, the intangible, our ideas.

Reflecting on this, I opened an aging NYT Sunday Review. While the recent coverage of Facebook decries its "fake news" and its implicit blame that the election was lost for Her by His minions in Macedonia planting false sites and misleading memes, the reaction from way back last May by Frank Bruni betrays a deeper concern. In "How Facebook Warps Our Worlds" he begins: "But unseen puppet masters on Mark Zuckerberg’s payroll aren’t to blame. We’re the real culprits. When it comes to elevating one perspective above all others and herding people into culturally and ideologically inflexible tribes, nothing that Facebook does to us comes close to what we do to ourselves." While not a new phenomenon, this technology tracks us and reinforces our own prejudices and priorities.

After delineating the echo chamber and referring to how we distrust institutions and so retreat to our communities of the like-minded for security, risking their scorn and aligning ourselves with their trust, Bruni decries this self-perpetuating safe space. Therefore, he concludes: "It’s not about some sorcerer’s algorithm. It’s about a tribalism that has existed for as long as humankind has and is now rooted in the fertile soil of the Internet, which is coaxing it toward a full and insidious flower."

But the blooms from FB can brighten our outlook. Today I also found in my feed from five years ago this Salon essay from a Rutgers sociologist. Eviatar Zerubavel asks "Why Do We Care About Our Ancestors?" Like many pieces on Salon, it's lifted from a book so it does not read that well in part.

Still, he sums up useful perspectives that align with my own investigation of the yearning for the tribal in alternative religions claiming to remake or remodel native European spiritual traditions.

He wraps up his argument: "long before we even knew about organic evolution (or about genetics, for that matter), we were already envisioning our genealogical ties to our ancestors as well as relatives in terms of blood, thereby making them seem more natural. As a result, we also tend to regard the essentially genealogical communities that are based on them (families, ethnic groups) as natural, organically delineated communities." He notes how this "blood tie" is rooted in evolution itself.

He concludes: "Yet nature is only one component of our genealogical landscape. Culture, too, plays a critical role in the way we theorize as well as measure genealogical relatedness. Not only is the unmistakably social logic of reckoning such relatedness quite distinct from the biological reality it supposedly reflects, it oft en overrides it, as when certain ancestors obviously count more than others in the way we determine kinship and ethnicity. Relatedness, therefore, is not a biological given but a social construct. Not only are genealogies more than mere reflections of nature, they are also more than mere records of history. Rather than simply passively documenting who our ancestors were, they are the narratives we construct to actually make them our ancestors." This ties to the yearning for us to find a famous forebear (for me, all the way back to Conchobar mac Nessa in the Táin) at the expense of the less-heralded. But for me, that ends in 1797, as no Irish records survive before then.

This search for origins I find comforting in this chaotic world reducing us to data-mined digital data. I realize it's a romanticized quest, but not all of us find satisfaction in being reduced to Caucasian-this or white-that. Ever since I used to half-jest in school "I'm not an Anglo, I'm Irish!" I suppose I stood for this impulse. In Irish, there's more than one word for family. Tomás De Bhaldraithe (whose name shows how the Normans with Germanic nomenclature turned Gaelic in their own monikers after they invaded the island and supposedly turned more Irish than...) in his English-Irish dictionary defines:

family, s. 1 (Members of household) Líon m tí, teaghlach m. Family life, saol (an)teaghlaigh. 2 (Parents, children, relations) Muintir f. 3 (Children) Clann f. She is in the family way, tá sí ag iompar clainne. How is your family? cén chaoi bhfuil do chúram? What family have they? cé mhéad duine clainne atá orthu? A family man, fear tí agus urláir. 4 (Descendants) Sliocht m (g. sleachta), síol m. Family tree, craobha fpl ginealaigh. 5 (Race) Cine m, treibh f. 6 Aicme f (rudaí); Biol: fine f. 7 Mth: Number families, uimhirfhinte fpl. Family of sets, cnuasach m tacar.

So, related by blood and members of household appear to overlap, if distinguishable. Children occupy a third category, moving the clan forward in time. Descendants down the line have their own niche, and that of the race, a term we don't carry over as neatly into English, another. The term mórtas cine or pride-in-heritage expresses this well, a reminder of the positive associations in Irish kinfolk.

Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age": Book Review

The first half of this massive 2007 study by a Canadian philosopher has appeared as Gifford Lectures, the prestigious Scottish series which since 1888 has featured leading thinkers discussing "natural theology." In the third and fourth paragraphs of his preface, Taylor admits the sketchiness of much of what follows, and his determination nonetheless to map out a vast intellectual terrain, in hopes others will fill in the blanks. While the results may frustrate those who find his habitual enumeration and his tendency to go two steps forward and one step at least back, as he zig-zags across the past five centuries, and while the prose leaves one wishing for the grace of his predecessor at the Lectures, William James, it nonetheless represents a formidable achievement that kept me thinking, annotating, and reacting.

As Taylor does often, one must sum up his argument by his own numbers.
David Ewart paraphrases Taylor's three stages of secularism thus:

1. "The first stage is characterized by the withdrawal of the religious world-view from the public sphere. This is the result of much more than just the rise of scientific world-view. This is the disenchantment of the cosmos. Secularism is the move from the enchanted reality to the de-enchanted reality - this freed science to follow its own trajectory. In an enchanted worldview science, politics and religion all shared the same world view. When that enchanted world-view disappeared science became free to follow its own rationale.
2. The second stage is seen in the decline in personal religious practice and commitment. This is a individual's withdrawal from the community. People shift the source of meaning away from external 'eternal' sources to more personal choices.
3. The third stage is the most recent development, which has caused a fragmentation of our ideas of social order. This is the shift in the culture away from assuming Religious Faith is the norm, or the default expectation of how to live your life. Faith is now one option among many. This is society living in a universe which has no central point around which it revolves."                 

Some of this, of course, is familiar. Max Weber's theory of "disenchantment" as driving secularism inspires Taylor's first parts of his schema. But he denies "subtraction theory" as the fullest explanation for why people don't believe like they used to. Simply saying religion retreated as science advanced leaves us wondering about the contested turf, for the same pre-modern landscape did not exist, for two worldviews to fight over. Instead, since 1500 or so, Taylor accounts in part three of his stages for the key difference making his analysis fresh. He shows how a "buffered" sensibility in modern people supplanted the "porous" reception of impacts and influences which characterized our forebears. They saw themselves as open to the spirits for better and worse; the divine bulwark of intercession and protection helped people withstand trouble and attain reward. A "buffered" identity keeps us at a distance; we can no longer be "naive," whether believers or skeptics, in a system where the "cosmos" ordered by God or gods becomes a "universe" which includes us, but removes most contemporary adherents from the nearby intercession and interference of an intimate divine presence.

This hefty narrative stumbles along. Taylor keeps glancing ahead and then looking back as he tries to progress. He does not translate all of the French and German he cites. Some thinkers or scholars are not credited except by surnames. Taylor presumes erudition on his audience's part, so academic references may lack context or introduction. Quotes may not be integrated or identified clearly. Endnotes are uneven: they can provide valuable insight, or they can be terse and formulaic; the reader of the text proper, from that alone, may have no idea which without checking out each enumeration. Sharper editing would have improved this. This thesis did not need a hesitant, repetitive elaboration.

However, it gets easier halfway in. The Victorian doubters (even before Darwin, and this is Taylor's point proven, for it was not as if one day evolution shoved aside faith for believers) such as Carlyle, Arnold, and his niece, novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward (the last in a novel about a clergyman's unease with his creed and his replacement of a messianic Jesus-as-God with an ethical figure as a model) emerged on behalf of those unable to countenance childlike faith. This era's gradual slip, starting with these intellectuals, from confidence in religion to grudging or fuller conviction in modernism means that the Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticism, and political- economic changes in the "North Atlantic" (his term for "the West") had to precede "science" as we know it. That transition and reorientation sets us in a universe edging on darkness, rather than an ordered cosmos full of light.

The conditions for "human flourishing" alter any modern believer or non-believer's reception of the religious messages we inherit. Taylor in his later chapters considers the difficulties of the therapeutic (human-potential movement, therapy, transformation from within) and transgressive (anti-humanist, Nietzschean, revolutionary) responses to religious hegemony, as neither to him satisfy the yearning. This inner longing persists no matter if the conditions for religion fade, and while Taylor never appears to question his own Catholicism or the reality of the Incarnation, he examines how the opposite, an "excarnation," has weakened the ability of many believers or skeptics to handle the needs of the body, from which we have become detached, dismissive, or destructive. He looks with caution at regarding only what Jesus taught and not what Christ did, and while Taylor's faith persists a priori, I would have liked the professor's insight into why this is so for him; this appears to limit the applicability of his lessons to non-Christians. Whatever one's identity, Taylor locates the loss of the "equilibrium" most of us need between fervor and denial; if not religion as we've known it, he reckons desire for the transcendent beyond existential limits or hedonistic immersion may endure.

He suggests that poetry, as in Jeffers, Hopkins, or Péguy, might heal the divided contemporary consciousness. He applauds church reform, but he also sympathizes with those who find, whether they themselves believe, in a weaker cultural impact for this force. Younger people are losing "some of the great languages of transcendance," and "massive unlearning is taking place" in consumerism.

In conclusion, neither "exclusive humanism" nor the Nietzschean revolt against restrictions convince Taylor. His drifting final section passes intriguing terrain. Part 5:17 has a great survey of how Christianity incorporated violence into its purportedly peaceful preaching, and death and sexuality earn attention in this chapter. But that ends not with a bang but some whispers about two stories we share. "Intellectual Deviation" tracks our cultural evolution away from medieval religious conformity imposed by a clerical elite and then upon a post-1500 community freed from "priestcraft" but a regimen insisting on communal piety, into "the rise of a culturally hegemonic notion of a closed immanent order". "Reform Master Narrative" required all to be 100% Christian, but this discipline discouraged many. The elite looked to Providential Deism as a halfway point to a mechanical model that broke away from the need for a Creator, and by the Victorians, this began to spread into the middle classes. While many adhere to fundamentalism and obedience today (an aspect under-examined in what is admittedly a rambling study and one far too long as it is), Taylor combines the theoretical ID with the RMN mass phenomenon explanations as two influences making up the "social imaginary" we all agree has replaced in the North Atlantic civilization the state-clerical polity. This prepared the way for Darwin (Marx and Freud are barely mentioned!) and the massive shifts in contemporary mindsets. Out of this two-track path, we emerge. So, we can "explain religion today."

(The above appeared with my reduced summation of the Ewart enumeration at Amazon US 1-2-15.) P.S. The Divine Conspiracy provides a pdf (search at the site) of Taylor's introduction and of Chapter 10 "The Expanding Universe of Unbelief."

Peter Fleming's "The Mythology of Work": Book Review

This is the first academic title I have reviewed where four-letter words and slangy invective jostle for space alongside dutiful repetition of theory. The Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself sustains Peter Fleming's critique of corporate culture. In his third book on this subject, he shifts from the institution to the employee. Or, perhaps associate, colleague or team member.

Many of us carry such titles now, after all. These terms convey collegiality and shared engagement. Yet, as Fleming confirms via a 2013 Gallup Poll, 70% of millions of workers surveyed worldwide report being "actively disengaged" within the neo-liberal version of employee exploitation. Workers subsidize the rich as well as the poor; the job over the past generation has become the epicenter of life. Fleming seeks "how to successfully refuse it and the webs of capture it closely spins."

When we value ourselves only as human capital, "mobile and always potentially valorizable," our self-worth plummets. As we run by our "biopower," our energy depleted during the day and renewed in our sleep, Fleming adds, we report to management. They treat us as if a "deranged girlfriend" who not only has no interest in whether she is liked or is loved, but lacks any liking or love for herself.

Such a startling metaphor captures the spirit of Fleming's book. While far too much of it follows a scholarly pattern of citations from professors and recitals of their findings, the vocabulary now and then wakes the reader up. For instance, a worker equals a "tagged prisoner." Today's results-driven work environment breaks up many tasks. They may be completed any time, day or night. This means no more "normal working day" where we can clock in and out, assured our boss will not call us in the middle of the night, e-mail us on Sunday morning, or text us on vacation. The electronic format that allows more of us to telecommute and submit our workload remotely also means that we are watched. The "injunction to perform" needs no punch clock. It depends on the time-stamp of what we upload.

While such a dispersed workplace may suggest democracy, Fleming reminds us of the contrary. Workers feel as if "behind enemy lines" when a supervisor asks us to speak frankly. With electronic data stored, keystrokes logged, and cubicles leaving us exposed to a Panopticon boss, a worker's autonomy ends. Mandated retreats and meetings enable managers to ferret out introverts or stragglers. Performance reviews often supplant the judgement of supervisors as to the worth of his or her workers. Delineated in numbing detail, job duties are tallied piecemeal, requiring employees to juggle multiple projects with sometimes no start or end. Facing this open-ended situation wearies workers.

"How can one speak to power and still retain anonymity?" Fleming asks such tough questions. Some workplaces have shifted superficially into more welcoming places, but this comfort level is pitched by the bosses, not the workers. The managers claim a rhetoric of frankness, but employees know that the conversation more often than not is likely to remain one-sided, tilted towards those issuing orders.

Workers feel trapped. Managers co-opt a neo-liberal acknowledgment of discontent apparent from their subordinates. A grip of capitalist "disruption" chokes everyone. Fleming avers how a "capitalist employment relationship begins to resemble a weird version of the battered-wife syndrome: the more we are beaten, and emotionally haunted by rejection, the more we desire to stay."

In our precarious and unstable economy, worker options to flee are few. In earlier decades, anarchists preached slowdowns, absenteeism, and sick-ins to factory workers. Unions were growing, and strikes were a potent threat. Now, as IT consultant Rob Lucas is quoted by Fleming, radical advice proves unwise. For "when your work resembles that of an artisan, sabotage would only make life harder." This resonates with many readers. Our tasks depend on us alone, or as part of a team of co-workers. With few places to hide from oversight, in person or online, workers grasp at a restoration of "biopower" by snatched days off. Lucas concurs, "It is a strange thing to rejoice in the onset of a flu."

Rationalization and efficiency reduce many workforces while increasing demand upon those left. Fleming attempts to alleviate the impacts felt by both employees and managers at the end of this short study. A surplus living wage. "post-state democratic organizations," ending oligarchies and monopolies, a three-day work week, "demassifying society as a positive global movement," and finally "demonetarizing incentive structures" comprise his six-point plan. Today's tumult in stock markets, the EU debt debates, the anger by many at too much or too little work all speak to such pressures. While these prescriptions seem utopian under our present circumstances, Fleming's disgust at "a factory that never sleeps" reminds us of the cynicism and paranoia that corrode many lives daily.
(Spectrum Culture 8-27-15; Amazon US 9-20-15)

Surplus Labor + me

Judy Cox, explaining Marx's theory in International Socialism (Summer 1998), a SWP magazine, concludes "As alienation is rooted in capitalist society, only the collective struggle against that society carries the potential to eradicate alienation, to bring our vast, developing powers under our conscious control and reinstitute work as the central aspect of life." I write this on Labor Day.

I don't want waged work to be my life's core. Anarchists encourage us to rethink this learned dependence. Mutual aid, voluntary organization, no demands to serve supervisors for corporate gain certainly appeal to my instinct. I want to produce creative work that I could exchange for others' goods and services, rather than a capitalist regime. But few of us "mature" folks have the stomach for dumpster diving or the gumption for petty theft. As I spend so much time and effort at my monitored posts, online and onsite, I reflect on how my occupation incorporates surveillance and management techniques that, in Marx's era, were the domain of the factory (or the prison as Foucault reminded us) rather than higher education. I am not idealizing the dispiriting system that started with Gradgrind, the dissertation and the professoriate. Still, earlier decades last century afforded some space for liberal arts, not all STEM. With digital data, a lurch has accelerated since Cox wrote this. The union where I work was "made redundant" before I was hired. This was a topic nobody confided in to me; I sensed, sub rosa, PTSD.

Lukacs proved as prescient about this loss of limited liberty as higher levels of the workplace became more standardized. In History and Class Consciousness, he pinned down the metamorphosis: "In consequence of the rationalisation of the work-process the human qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker appear increasingly as mere sources of error when contrasted with these abstract special laws functioning according to rational predictions. Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of this process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already pre-existing and self-sufficient, it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not.^34"

Cox cites Harry Braverman's 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital to document this deskilling of white collar jobs and to a situation where managers have a monopoly of control over the production process: 'The unity of thought and action, conception and execution, hand and mind, which capitalism threatened from it beginnings, is now attacked by a systematic dissolution employing all the resources of science and the various engineering disciplines based upon it'.³² Conditions of work, from the length of the working day to the space we occupy, are predetermined: 'The entire work operation, down to its smallest motion, is conceptualised by the management and engineering staff, laid out, measured, fitted with training and performance standards - all entirely in advance'.^33"

This control increases, as Edward Snowden warns. “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.” — “Edward Snowden: ‘The US government will say I aided our enemies,’” July 8, 2013

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” “Snowden Sends Christmas Message To USA,” Dec. 25, 2013. (More quotes here.)

Certainly this (de-)evolution has long been charted. Reading Marxist analyses of how my workplace has altered over the past generation, their reports dovetail with Peter Fleming's 2015 study. This London-based professor of business and society plots in The Mythology of Work, in his apt subtitle, "How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself." But where Fleming seems to depart from the Marxian critique may be in his updated critique of neo-liberal economics and management. Diverging from such as Cox who wishes to restore work as the ground for our purpose, only under our control, Fleming cautions us against embracing those who make work's "impudent needlessness" rather our "basilar necessity" out of "moral rectitude." (22) He also reminds us that "anti-work" arguments based on how the work day is stretched out to eight hours when we can do our task, earn enough for our needs, and go home in a fraction of that day will not satisfy today's capitalists. They don't present us with "finite tasks" to be checked off at our own pace. They offer jobs with "forever multiplying demands." (8) Not for only productivity and profit but one's "display" of "protracted submission" to work's ritual results. Surplus toil increases when the phone and P.C. may call us in at any moment. We are human capital, so managerial emphasis weighs accordingly on not the adjective but the noun. Fleming accounts for why meetings proliferate and bosses summon us to be seen, power plus profit.

Unfortunately, as my review elaborates, Fleming offers solutions as distant as those of some in my current reading of left-libertarians. That is, I agree with and I aspire to many of them, but as my duty is to pay bills, to keep my family fed, sheltered, and schooled, escaping tonight to fulfill my bliss is not an exit option. I also agree, that we start towards our dreams by re-constructing daily reality.

Bryce Colvert writes in The Nation, after revelations of the driven culture of Amazon staff, how we are trapped in this rapid pace of production. "It speaks to an inability to say no. And in the face of that disempowerment, we may be telling ourselves extreme demands are in fact voluntary choices. After all, it feels better to think of time spent in front of a computer well into the night as something done in the service of passion than in the service of someone else’s bottom line." More stress, longer hours, no increase in pay, stagnant wages for decades, work-life broken boundaries: we are the 99%.

Work, Dog, Work

Last year I reviewed Nikil Saval's Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. Although annoyed by the subtitle, increasingly used to market books on subjects I reckon might be thought otherwise dull, I could relate to the situation, having been "rightsized" not too long ago as my place of employment was halved, and many of us moved from shared offices to cubicles, except for higher-ups. This demoralized us, and this year, I am further displaced, as a satellite site I teach at finds me at a workstation, and I feel, tellingly, marooned as even my cubicle with its colorful magnets is far away.

Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath published last June "Why You Hate Work," and I loved this illustration in the New York Times by Olivier Schrauwen, If it was not on newsprint, I'd have pinned it up in my cubicle. The writers report on analyses of engagement, renewal, value, focus, and purpose. Many of us lack time to think, and the constant interruption of demands transmitted or at our cubicle lead to frustration, unsurprisingly. But as a comment on my PopMatters review linked above noted, some of us also work better with headphones, and the separation of the office from the office space allows mothers to stay productive, True, but it's also an electronic leash, as I am working every day.

My parents and ancestors would regard my complaints as ridiculous. You resigned yourself to labor. Eight hours, five days, and that was it. You'd go home, sit by the fire and jabber, or later watch t.v., and never think about the job that much once you were off work. Only two generations separate me from an Irish farm, and once more, that life however romanticized was hard, wearing one out soon.

One of the first books I loved, and the first my older son learned to read all the way, was P.D. Eastman's Go, Dog, Go!. My wife gave it as a gift to our great-grandniece, and that child's  grandmother reposted the NYT article today, reminding me of why I liked it. I recall where the sentence "work, dog, work" appeared in that venerable children's primer, as blue dogs shoveled away.

Ruth Kinna (ed.) "The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism": Book Review

Anarchism resists centralized dictates. easy categorization or top-down organization. Hence, scholarly work on anarchist movements has been scattered. Academics are unlikely to moonlight as black bloc activists or engage in direct action such as the Occupy movement or encampments and protests against the state or the system. Anthropologists or literary critics who champion anarchist investigation may find their analyses marginalized or ignored, while grassroots activists may be suspicious of the academic apparatus.

The two dozen contributors assembled in this volume come from around the world and break down the barriers between participation and observation. These mentors use a multidisciplinary approach that crosses divisions within the academic community and, more importantly, outside university walls. Originally published in 2012 as The Continuum Companion to Anarchism, this revised paperback edition is available at a more affordable price and includes Ruth Kinna’s updated opening and concluding remarks.

Saul Newman opens a chapter on post-anarchism by defining anarchism itself as “a political and ethical critique of power, particularly that which is embedded in the state and in capitalist economic relations.” This critique “contends that life can be lived without government and that social relations can and should be organized through decentralized, voluntary and cooperative structures, and on the basis of liberty and equality.” Newman applies Michel Foucault’s “war model” to criticize radical political methods bent on revolt against and elimination of the opposition. Instead, Newman aspires toward a post-anarchist “political-ethical-spiritual project of autonomy.” As with many of the subsequent entries, his essay ends just as it becomes interesting. But Newman may ignite a spark of curiosity and spur eager readers to action.

This do-it-yourself approach emerged more playfully during Foucault’s rise to international prominence in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It challenged earlier theories and champions of anarchism and invited counterculture efforts to expand the possibilities of the body in more creative ways. It liberated individual as well as mass movements as a viable way to move beyond trade unions or general strikes, and suggested that change might come by less dramatic means such as alternative structures and inspired attitudes flourishing behind the scenes.

The anthology’s most creative chapter is enriched by channeling older forms of resistance to newer versions of existence. Jonathan Purkis’ “The Hitchhiker as Theorist: Re-thinking Sociology and Anthropology from an Anarchist Perspective” explores the “mutual aid, cooperation and trust” of underground economies that operate largely free of monetary transactions. Urban or rural, on the road or off the grid, this far-flung network is sustained by trust between hitchhikers and their supporters. Open space for communal and individual organization can thrive out of reach of the law and conventional power relations.

Uri Gordon encourages further research based on participant-observation, providing guidance on framing proposals to meet ethical standards and advice on how conduct such research within a potentially suspicious atmosphere. The subversive potential of Gordon and his fellow social scientists David Graeber and Richard Day finds a spirited defense in Laurence Davis’ “Anarchism and the Future of Revolution.” Davis rallies to his colleagues’ side against those who indict the professors for being insufficiently radicalized, too cautious in cheering on the imminent global triumph of the 99%.

In “Genders and Sexualities in Anarchist Movements,” Sandra Jeppesen and Holly Nazar explore how change can come by more intimate means. Along with a literary chapter by David Goodway, Jeppesen and Nazar nod to to the imaginative gender and social constructs of science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula LeGuin. However, the book’s treatment of popular culture remains under-examined compared to its denser political and theoretical investigations. The index doesn’t even mention music: no Sex Pistols, let alone Crass. Fine arts coverage is similarly less than comprehensive. The section on art history seems to exist mostly for its author to defend his scholarly publication record against a Marxist-oriented critic. This is part of what must be a lively dialogue, but it’s out of place in a reference work, crowding out other voices from the intersection between art and anarchism.

The book nevertheless represents a variety of voices that address social ecology, Latin America, analytical philosophy, anarchist forebears and theorists, geography and urban space and issues of race and ethnicity. A useful supplement defines key terms, a guide to internet, print and other media resources and lists of other reference works. These appendices redress some of the shortcomings of the essays in breadth and scope. True to an anarchist spirit, the archives, networks, and collectives compiled represent the potential applied by activists past and present. These efforts prefigure ways in which we can start to live freer now, rather than daydream about future liberation. (Spectrum Culture 9-29-14; Amazon US 2-6-15)

he activist.

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part 1: Research on Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Introduction
Approaches to anarchist research
Saul Newman, Research methods and problems: Postanarchism
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism and analytic philosophy
Allan Antliff, Anarchism and Art History: Methodologies of Insurrection
Uri Gordon, Participant Observation
Alex Prichard, Anarchy, Anarchism and International Relations
Current research in anarchist studies
Carissa Honeywell, Anarchism old and new
Jonathan Purkis, The hitchhiker as theorist: Re-thinking sociology and anthropology from an anarchist perspective
Sandra Jeppesen Holly Nazar, Genders and sexualities in anarchist movements
David Goodway, Literature and anarchism
Laurence Davis, Anarchism and the future of revolution
Andy Price, Social ecology
Sara Motta, Leyendo el anarchismo a través de ojos latinoamericanos: Reading Anarchism through Latin American Eyes
Ian G. Cook & Joanne Norcup, Geographies and Urban Space
Süreyyya Evren, There Ain't No Black in the Anarchist Flag! Race, Ethnicity and Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Where to Now? Future Directions for anarchist research

Part 2: Materials for further Research
Key terms
Resources
Bibliography
Guide to bibliographical and reference works
Selective guide to non-English language sources

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-companion-to-anarchism-9781628924305/#sthash.nrXyPgi1.dpuf

he activist.

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part 1: Research on Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Introduction
Approaches to anarchist research
Saul Newman, Research methods and problems: Postanarchism
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism and analytic philosophy
Allan Antliff, Anarchism and Art History: Methodologies of Insurrection
Uri Gordon, Participant Observation
Alex Prichard, Anarchy, Anarchism and International Relations
Current research in anarchist studies
Carissa Honeywell, Anarchism old and new
Jonathan Purkis, The hitchhiker as theorist: Re-thinking sociology and anthropology from an anarchist perspective
Sandra Jeppesen Holly Nazar, Genders and sexualities in anarchist movements
David Goodway, Literature and anarchism
Laurence Davis, Anarchism and the future of revolution
Andy Price, Social ecology
Sara Motta, Leyendo el anarchismo a través de ojos latinoamericanos: Reading Anarchism through Latin American Eyes
Ian G. Cook & Joanne Norcup, Geographies and Urban Space
Süreyyya Evren, There Ain't No Black in the Anarchist Flag! Race, Ethnicity and Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Where to Now? Future Directions for anarchist research

Part 2: Materials for further Research
Key terms
Resources
Bibliography
Guide to bibliographical and reference works
Selective guide to non-English language sources

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-companion-to-anarchism-9781628924305/#sthash.nrXyPgi1.dpuf

he activist.

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part 1: Research on Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Introduction
Approaches to anarchist research
Saul Newman, Research methods and problems: Postanarchism
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism and analytic philosophy
Allan Antliff, Anarchism and Art History: Methodologies of Insurrection
Uri Gordon, Participant Observation
Alex Prichard, Anarchy, Anarchism and International Relations
Current research in anarchist studies
Carissa Honeywell, Anarchism old and new
Jonathan Purkis, The hitchhiker as theorist: Re-thinking sociology and anthropology from an anarchist perspective
Sandra Jeppesen Holly Nazar, Genders and sexualities in anarchist movements
David Goodway, Literature and anarchism
Laurence Davis, Anarchism and the future of revolution
Andy Price, Social ecology
Sara Motta, Leyendo el anarchismo a través de ojos latinoamericanos: Reading Anarchism through Latin American Eyes
Ian G. Cook & Joanne Norcup, Geographies and Urban Space
Süreyyya Evren, There Ain't No Black in the Anarchist Flag! Race, Ethnicity and Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Where to Now? Future Directions for anarchist research

Part 2: Materials for further Research
Key terms
Resources
Bibliography
Guide to bibliographical and reference works
Selective guide to non-English language sources

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-companion-to-anarchism-9781628924305/#sthash.nrXyPgi1.dpuf

he activist.

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part 1: Research on Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Introduction
Approaches to anarchist research
Saul Newman, Research methods and problems: Postanarchism
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism and analytic philosophy
Allan Antliff, Anarchism and Art History: Methodologies of Insurrection
Uri Gordon, Participant Observation
Alex Prichard, Anarchy, Anarchism and International Relations
Current research in anarchist studies
Carissa Honeywell, Anarchism old and new
Jonathan Purkis, The hitchhiker as theorist: Re-thinking sociology and anthropology from an anarchist perspective
Sandra Jeppesen Holly Nazar, Genders and sexualities in anarchist movements
David Goodway, Literature and anarchism
Laurence Davis, Anarchism and the future of revolution
Andy Price, Social ecology
Sara Motta, Leyendo el anarchismo a través de ojos latinoamericanos: Reading Anarchism through Latin American Eyes
Ian G. Cook & Joanne Norcup, Geographies and Urban Space
Süreyyya Evren, There Ain't No Black in the Anarchist Flag! Race, Ethnicity and Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Where to Now? Future Directions for anarchist research

Part 2: Materials for further Research
Key terms
Resources
Bibliography
Guide to bibliographical and reference works
Selective guide to non-English language sources

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-companion-to-anarchism-9781628924305/#sthash.nrXyPgi1.dpuf

he activist.

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part 1: Research on Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Introduction
Approaches to anarchist research
Saul Newman, Research methods and problems: Postanarchism
Benjamin Franks, Anarchism and analytic philosophy
Allan Antliff, Anarchism and Art History: Methodologies of Insurrection
Uri Gordon, Participant Observation
Alex Prichard, Anarchy, Anarchism and International Relations
Current research in anarchist studies
Carissa Honeywell, Anarchism old and new
Jonathan Purkis, The hitchhiker as theorist: Re-thinking sociology and anthropology from an anarchist perspective
Sandra Jeppesen Holly Nazar, Genders and sexualities in anarchist movements
David Goodway, Literature and anarchism
Laurence Davis, Anarchism and the future of revolution
Andy Price, Social ecology
Sara Motta, Leyendo el anarchismo a través de ojos latinoamericanos: Reading Anarchism through Latin American Eyes
Ian G. Cook & Joanne Norcup, Geographies and Urban Space
Süreyyya Evren, There Ain't No Black in the Anarchist Flag! Race, Ethnicity and Anarchism
Ruth Kinna, Where to Now? Future Directions for anarchist research

Part 2: Materials for further Research
Key terms
Resources
Bibliography
Guide to bibliographical and reference works
Selective guide to non-English language sources

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-companion-to-anarchism-9781628924305/#sthash.nrXyPgi1.dpuf

Nicholas Smaligo's "The Occupy Movement Explained": Book Review

Correcting misconceptions that the Occupy Movement suddenly erupted and just as rapidly fizzled, Nicholas Smaligo argues in this brisk, short survey that what started as Occupy Wall Street in the late summer of 2011 finds rugged roots in anti-capitalist dissent. This foundation enables Occupy's critique to endure. Aimed at a wide audience, Smaligo's own explication remains accessible and opinionated, for he promotes his own understanding as a participant in Carbondale, Illinois, and in St. Louis, to widen the relevance of how Occupy inspired student and worker-led local campaigns to act.

Action dominates. Smaligo begins by connecting anti-capitalist forms of mutual aid and labor to anti-authoritarian politics. This has often been defined as anarchism, which he accepts in general application, but Smaligo broadens those who swelled the ranks of Occupy to include many more who were simply "fed up with the whole process" (48) and who were motivated to camp out, march, donate, and participate over a duration, so as to settle a practical protest set firmly in place and space.

This reclaiming of a commons Smaligo promotes as a fundamental achievement. Symbolically, a commons becomes a place and space over time where people can forge bonds, establish communities, and advance particular causes. Smaligo explains how four "threads" twined to connect Occupiers so gathered. First, he reminds readers of a pioneering if tellingly overlooked activist, Ella Baker. Half a century ago, she and other grassroots organizers did not seek the spotlight or podium, but worked away from camera or microphone, minimizing hierarchy or grandstanding. Second, Baker and her comrades favored direct action rather than appealing to party politics, or police and legal cooperation.

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) is a name likely as unfamiliar as Baker's for most present-day activists. Smaligo rightfully revives de Cleyre's reputation as a proponent of direct action. Third, he segues into the prefigurative politics advocated by David Graeber: act as if the future has already arrived, and one is already free. Jo Freeman's caution to feminists, taken from her 1970 essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness," remains valid: no planning such as Graeber and his colleagues engaged in as they sparked OWS can mask its own power dynamics, so these are best first articulated. This range, as this array of activists and theorists demonstrates, shows how Smaligo strives to present Occupy material within a larger anarchist tradition, and its left-libertarian lessons.

A fourth aspect emerges. The Quaker example of reaching a formal consensus by process and the early-1980s anti-nuclear protests of the Clamshell Alliance in New Hampshire suggest frameworks which Occupiers took up, perhaps often by those oblivious to these predecessors. Zapatistas and the Global Justice Network, by contrast, may have been by their own media-savvy presence in a wired age more visible influences, for some from anti-WTO actions a decade or so earlier entered OWS.

Compared or contrasted with the mass demonstrations which rocked Seattle or Athens a few years before, Occupy has been often mocked for its lack of a single demand, or maybe a slickly marketed, news-friendly soundbite beyond the catchphrase "We are the 99%." Smaligo strives to correct this misnomer. On September 29, 2001, a Declaration of Occupation of New York City with a clearly listed set of grievances received little attention from the mass media or from most OWS naysayers.

(Before and then during my participation at Occupy L.A. which solidified about a month later, I cited this document within a circle which surrounded me in cyberspace and in real life of Occupy skeptics; it met with a marked lack of interest from many. Admittedly, the online forum registers its flurry of interest rising and falling over OWS' short span, as well as spam posts and the usual rants or trolls.)

Rachel Schragis shaped a flowchart of that Declaration, insisting "all our grievances are connected" (98); their common foe was an oppressive corporate force, and its politically complicit institutions. Smaligo distinguishes civil from political disobedience to separate recognition of the law from a defiance of a judicial and police system which imposes injustice on those who oppose corporate and state control. Representative democracy cannot speak for those disenfranchised and distant; only participatory democracy, as the General Assemblies tried to model at Occupy, can speak for the 99%. This is one more reason why a space and a place were needed for Occupy to take back, to reclaim.

Subsequent chapters delve into related issues about the legitimacy of the movement. Why it attracted so many who would previously have simply voted (more likely for Obama and the standard Democratic ticket claiming liberal credentials) and done little else, Smaligo suggests, may lie in the catalyst for wider resentment and discontent the past few years. Obama was elected, but too little changed for many. Alienated labor, after all, cannot compete against the powers that be who buy out such politicians, who in turn, whatever party, back those bankers. Slavery may have ended, but we rent ourselves for a day's pay, Smaligo avers. Liberals delight in assuring everyday folks they have their interests in mind, but no less than conservatives, politicians and the wealthy connive to construct the conditions of coercion which force workers to be driven into debt, for fear of losing the freedom supposedly granted all who must seek shelter, eat, and pay bills. Many of us endure what one graphic designer turned Occupier terms "a pit of emptiness" where no meaning rewards us, only a paycheck.

Kicking back against this alienation, Smaligo acclaims the reclaimed commons. Instead of resigning ourselves to "capitalist realism," which accepts no other alternative exists to the current economic and cultural hegemony, he wants to widen the "crack" wedged apart by anti-capitalist mobilization. How much force must be used to kick down doors and jimmy open cracks, however, leads to a lack of consensus among Occupiers. He narrates how even in the comparatively far more radical Oakland encampment, "diversity of tactics" as asserted by those who comprised its black bloc found less than unanimous support. Smaligo deftly takes the reader through a well-chosen history lesson. Nonviolent proponents King and Gandhi advanced by an advantage in negotiating with those whom they opposed, all the while bolstered by the pressure of those ready to act more violently. Dissidents loomed as the alternative the state or empire did not wish to face, vs. those marching peacefully.

From such precedents, the police also learned a lesson, as Smaligo cites Kristian Williams' framework. For law and order, escalated force tactics of the Civil Rights era gave way to negotiated management, with softer responses seen as less confrontational by participants in the 1980s and 1990s. But the 1999 anti-WTO protests, with black-bloc disruption, catalyzed a counter-reaction of strategic incapacitation. This, bolstered by post-9/11 "Fusion Centers" coordinating federal data with local surveillance, heightens the odds against those who protest, in turn perhaps necessitating more adaption of masks and hoods to obscure the faces of those whom cameras and film seek to identify.

The circle of violence within a nonviolent paradigm promoted by many Occupiers widens. Chris Hedges, a prominent critic of the corporate-political syndrome and the two-party structure, in an essay "The Cancer of Occupy" singled out the black-bloc as a counter-productive "faction." Smaligo examines in depth if not Hedges' original claim (oddly, only a phrase is cited directly and Hedges' February 6, 2012 Truthdig essay does not appear in Smaligo's bibliography) but the collective CrimethInc.'s articulate defense of "diversity of tactics." Against what the Obama Administration has enacted on December 31, 2011 as the National Defense Authorization Act to theoretically prosecute Occupy-type protests as if "low-level terrorism," Smaligo rallies support for what the movement has contributed to common conversation since then. Income inequality turns everyday lingo; the police state, as subsequent revelations after this book was published continue to affirm, relentlessly gains funding and materiel from federal post-9/11 entities under the guise of homeland security or defense.

Looking ahead, these sit-ins, occupations, and black blocs, as Smaligo concludes, may themselves give way to innovation, a vast uprising to oppose capitalism. Given the odds and the forces of arms and data arrayed against those who protest, some caution this is futile. Meanwhile, foreclosures are battled, post-Sandy victims are helped, students and workers and patients burdened by debt are promised relief. In such varied methods, even if the name does not carry on, the spirit of Occupy continues, underground or on the ground around us. It frees these shared resources from ecological meltdown, corporate stranglehold, and political corruption becomes a campaign for all. This book compliments two of its many sources, Graeber's The Democracy Project and Nathan Schneider's Thank You, Anarchy, in combining personal testimony with informed advocacy. Together, may such participant-observers guide the rest of us, whether we participated at an Occupy camp or not, in ways to continue resisting any power which takes away the common wealth which is our birthright. 

Amazon US 2-2-15. Scheduled for New Clear Vision. See also at that site my review of earlier books on Occupy: Sept 20, 2013 "Lifting the Tent Flap"

Disenchantment as Truth

 
I've been mulling over the relevance of Dante for secular readers lately, drafting a forthcoming article for PopMatters, and this reflection deepens into the impact of what Max Weber called Entzauberung, "disenchantment of the world." Once religion loses its hold on one's psyche, and one's society, what holds it together? John Messerly at Salon (a very erratic site given over to "I married a Republican," "My endless [female] orgasm," and "outrage over white male privilege" types of clickbait, but one which does excerpt religious content, if in earnest, endless book excerpts from humanists and skeptics) argues in Religion's Smart People Problem: The Shaky Intellectual Foundations of Absolute Faith: "With the wonders of science every day attesting to its truth, why do many prefer superstition and pseudo science? The simplest answer is that people believe what they want to, what they find comforting, not what the evidence supports: In general, people don’t want to know; they want to believe." Furthermore, he tries to figure out why highly educated people, then, continue to believe.

Messerly sums up two theories for religion's persistence. Cohesion of society, or causation as explained. It stimulates in-group solidarity, and it accounts for just-so stories, which comfort us. For the smarter among us, rationalization means they may seek to support by tenuous claims what they had originally "believed for non-smart reasons." They may also not back up, deep down, what they say they believe. Hope and solace, after all, may rely on faith. Also, and this seems true to me, they may publicly affirm what they privately may doubt, as if religion is better used to comfort the masses. Messerly makes an aside to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, to show the palliative nature of religion. He defines a third function for the educated: religion at an advanced level may not match that of the common folks. Process theology, Teilhard de Chardin (my example) or panentheism aren't common.

In a twist on the subtraction theory explanation, where religion retreats as science progresses, Messerly propounds: "Among the intelligentsia it is common and widespread to find individuals who lost childhood religious beliefs as their education in philosophy and the sciences advanced. By contrast, it is almost unheard of to find disbelievers in youth who came to belief as their education progressed. This asymmetry is significant; advancing education is detrimental to religious belief. This suggest[s] another part of the explanation for religious belief—scientific illiteracy." I like this retort: "we should remember that the burden of proof is not on the disbeliever to demonstrate there are no gods, but on believers to demonstrate that there are." If one claims "invisible elephants," then one does not make one's proof convincing by challenging a doubter who cannot disprove the pachyderms.

Passion, goodwill, and conviction, as I labor to teach, do not equal verification for a thesis or truth-claim. I challenged a speaker in my speech course when his assertions that the world was created less than ten thousand years ago, in my opinion, failed to make his intense presentation persuasive. His evidence was faulty, and the few discrepancies he uncovered in carbon dating could not undermine the massive evidence. For, "if you defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we should conclude that they simply don’t care about what’s true. We shouldn’t conclude that their beliefs are true because they are fervently held."

That also leads to fideism, putting faith up as the sole arbiter of proof, and this, Messerly mentions, makes faith itself arbitrary. Or, the modern spin that might say that student had every right to his views as much as I do mine, and who's to stay which is true? This erodes our shared foundation of truth, when insufficient evidence is peddled as if proving unsubstantiated claims which can harm.

Faith without reason, he concludes, fails to satisfy the more discerning among us. Religion may help us in the way that whisky helps a drunk, but we don’t want to go through life drunk. If religious beliefs are just vulgar superstitions, then we are basing our lives on delusions. And who would want to do that?" He concludes: "Because human beings need their childhood to end; they need to face life with all its bleakness and beauty, its lust and  its love, its war and its peace. They need to make the world better. No one else will." But my students have often answered this bluntness, as community, ritual, and meaning accompany theological practice. Thomas Merton, according to his biographer Michael Mott, shortly before his sudden death reflected on "existential contemplation" as a condition he approached, and he helped "unbelieving believers." These elements of a belief system persist too. Culturally, religion may strive even now to provide an aesthetic immersion or emotional uplift which the humanist insistence on "is that all there is?" may not, for those educated or not, in darker times.

I reply that most of those whom I teach continue as unswayed as ever by their childhood belief system, but some do reveal they are disturbed by what they learn as other religious systems, and then none as I also try to include tangentially, are introduced as we go through two months together, exposed to varying answers to the great questions of existence and endurance. And, there is always at least one student who has believed and now does not, to spice up the discussions. This makes me speculate that what I have started in motion, as a kind of Primum Mobile, if not Uncaused Cause, may result in further collisions between one's past and one's future, as the present shifts and brings us face-to-face with belief, and what we are to place our faith in. The cost of education tallies as doubt.