Recent Articles
Cultural Globalization and the US Civil Rights Movement
On May 7, 1963, Sidney W. Smyer stood up during a secret meeting, announced “I’m a segregationist, but I’m not a damn fool,” and handed the US civil rights movement a watershed victory.The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media
A new world of world music was built on Cambodian Rocks. The CD was released on the New York City–based Parallel World label in 1996, and for most listeners, it was hard to find anything else like it. The compilation collected tracks from a number of…Consumption for the Common Good? Commodity Biography Film in an Age of Postconsumerism
Taken together, the remarks of Karl Marx and Thomas Beale quoted above suggest that both consumers and producers should know a lot about commodities and where they come from, but neither actually do. Herman Melville quotes Beale in the prefatory “Ext…The Ghost in the Financial Machine
This essay lays out an argument that leads back from some debates in contemporary social studies of finance to arguments that have not been fully developed in some classic writings of Marcel Mauss (1990 [1954]) and Max Weber (2009 [1920]). My starting…A Flying Man, a Scuttled Ship, and a Timekeeping Device: Reflections on Ibn Battuta Mall
Presenting itself as “revolutionizing the retail and entertainment experience in Dubai,” not only by “celebrating the travels of the famous Arabic explorer Ibn Battuta” but also through “the exciting mix of over 275 retailers, 50 restaurants and food…