On the Sociology of “Doing as If”

For Jeffrey Goldfarb

_____ I taught with Jeff Goldfarb for many years, mostly at the New School, but also at  Sciences Po, in Paris.  Sometimes, as part of a curriculum, and some times for the mere pleasure of debating. It was a pleasure we pursued almost uninterruptedly for more than I0 years, inviting ourselves to each ...
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On the Sociology of “Doing as If”

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

_____ In the summer of 2013, I was about to start my graduate degree at The New School for Social Research. A month before I sat in Jeff Goldfarb’s contemporary sociology class, I was in Istanbul—protesting, resisting, and critically thinking with many others about our collective actions, media activism, and the ...
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What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

Jeff Goldfarb navigated–and worked through–the polar opposites that can define academic and political life

_____ Jeff Goldfarb has been my teacher, colleague, and friend: our conversations about culture, politics, democracy, and activism—through reading and writing, in public and private forums—have continued since I began as a student in the Department of Sociology at the NSSR. From and with Jeff, and by studying sites within which democracy ...
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Learning to Think About Memory and Politics

A Connection That Never Expired

In 1974, Jeffrey Goldfarb went to Poland to do research about democracy—and put down lasting roots

Claire Potter: Elzbieta, let's begin with when you met Jeff Goldfarb.  Elzbieta Matynia: Jeff and Naomi Goldfarb came to Poland in 1973—Jeff was on an IREX fellowship, and Naomi attended some studio classes at the Academy of Arts. I had just begun my graduate studies. But we were both interested in the same ...
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A Connection That Never Expired

Time’s Up for Fossil Fuels

A photo essay

Roughly 100 people got up very early on a very hot day to demonstrate against the use of fossil fuels. Mary Crow led everyone in prayer on DC’s Freedom Plaza around 7:30 a.m. Leaving a little after 8:00 a.m., different groups walked to five different locations around the ellipse and ...
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Time’s Up for Fossil Fuels

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

France’s culture wars are being fanned by a racism that cannot be discussed in public—but that followers of Marine Le Pen understand all the same

_____ French President Emmanuel Macron was greeted at a recent press event with a slap in the face. Damien T., the man who delivered the slap, was heard yelling “Montjoie! Saint-Denis!” and “A bas la macronie” the former being a Royalist battle cry, the latter translating as “Down with Macronism!” The reason ...
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Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Where were conservatives when theories justifying white racial supremacy propped up slavery, imperialism and genocide?

_____ Following a script being used in at least 16 other states, lawmakers in my home state of Wisconsin are taking aim at “critical race theory.”  The proposed GOP legislation would ban anyone teaching in a public classroom, from kindergarten to college from promoting the notion that “any race is superior ...
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The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky shows how deeply rooted distrust in science is now embedded in the culture of white evangelicals

_____ Following Liz Cheney’s ouster from the GOP House leadership, there have been murmurings among some Republicans about starting a break-away party committed to upholding traditional conservative policies rather than defending Donald Trump’s false assertion that he, not Joe Biden, is in fact the duly elected President of the United States. ...
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Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

_____ “Democracy,” wrote Charles Tilly, “does not resemble an oilfield or a garden, but a lake. A lake,” he continues, can come into being because a mountain stream feeds into a naturally-existing basin, because someone or something dams up the outlet of a large river, because a glacier melts, because an earthquake ...
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A Tale of Two Democracies

How the Left Took Power in Peru

Castillo imagines a new politics

_____ In his closing statement as a leading candidate in Peru’s last presidential debate on May 30th in Arequipa, Pedro Castillo, the favorite of the left-wing Perú Libre (PL) party, promised that if he became President, there would be “no more poor people in a rich country.” The second-biggest producer of copper ...
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How the Left Took Power in Peru

Soccer and the Enduring Nonsense of Race

Austrian Marko Arnautović’s verbal assault on North Macedonia’s Ezgjan Alioski raises questions about race and nation in Europe’s past and present

_____ Soccer star Marko Arnautović made headlines last week, less for the goal he scored in the 89th minute of his native Austria’s European Cup game against North Macedonia than for his post-goal antics. Soccer celebrations often mix joy and aggression. But it quickly became clear to television viewers that Arnautović, criticized ...
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Soccer and the Enduring Nonsense of Race

Confederate Monuments Are Not History

Like the contemporary war on “critical race theory,” these statues of the defeated prop up white supremacy in the name of a false past

_____ It seemed as though monuments were suddenly in the news during Donald Trump’s presidency, but they have always been controversial. Monuments to the Confederacy were contested by African American citizens as soon as they appeared after 1865. Black citizens understood these monuments for what they were: a rallying point for ...
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Confederate Monuments Are Not History