From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Theory Cartoons—Individual and Group

Click here for the "Theory Cartoons" Resource Center (all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Theory Cartoons" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
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On this date in Round and Square History 
31 May 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 05-31
31 May 2012—The Accidental Ethnographer: Ocean and Isle 2a
31 May 2011—Endings: The Death of Captain Cook
[a] Individuality The New Yorker 2014 06-02
This cartoon lies at the heart of all social theory (theorizing). Period. Who am I? Who are we? This has bedeviled Western scholars for the better part of two centuries (and their utter inability to comprehend broader movements beyond individuality are baffling). 
[b] Individual/Society RF

So-called "Eastern" thinkers have pondered this, too. Sometimes...individual, family, clan, and society blend and merge. Should we leap at that?

I don't think so (although it is intriguing).

Only in the last century (I hear you Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, George Herbert Mead, David Riesman, and Pierre Bourdieu, and Paul Ricoeur) have Western theorists really began to engage the issue in this cartoon.

And think about it. Project yourself into the cartoon. You watch MSNBC...like a whole bunch of others. You watch FOX News...like a whole bunch of others. You identify with climate change; you don't. 

David Riesman had this nailed sixty years ago. Don't kid yourself about your "individuality." Yes, I saw the person on the bus today taking "selfies." You are (and it is not all your fault) "other-directed." Get over it, and read The Lonely Crowd (a few decades too late).

That we haven't even really begun to engage this theoretical question (and NOT ONE is more important) is baffling.
[c] Individuality...and Sociality RF

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