Category: Social Theory
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Defining
Read more: DefiningIn a small, completely random conversation with a neighbor not long ago, I recommended to her a shop with “cool earrings” in a beach town here in Michigan. She wanted to know what I meant by “cool.” Indeed, depending on when you catch me, this could mean any number of things: an ankh, a petroglyph…
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Communication · Development · Project Management · Psychology · Social Theory · Sustainability · Urban PlanningIn Transformation, It’s All Signal
Read more: In Transformation, It’s All SignalIn some media I’ve consumed recently, a woman speaker made a casual side remark that men act to act, and women act in context. I don’t know if those two categories are gendered, but I do recognize them. I have seen them play out repeatedly in projects, and I have been particularly keyed to them…
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Urbanist Series – Blood and Soil
Read more: Urbanist Series – Blood and SoilOne of the advantages in looking at community organizing and development through the field of social work is that it consistently invites you to dilate the lens from micro to macro. I am always intrigued, for example, by how communities act collectively in ways which reflect certain psychological types. Drawing from the strength of interdisciplinary…
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Just Whip It
Read more: Just Whip ItI moved to Detroit partly in response to a subconscious nudge which can never genuinely be broken down in rational terms: these nudges are Gestalt. But mentally, I expected Detroit to present every form of social questioning, and so it does. Daily, in just the small sphere of my particular neighborhood, sweeping issues of fundamental…
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The City Corner, a Crux and Axis
Read more: The City Corner, a Crux and AxisDetroit is a unique city in that, aesthetically, it’s not a city at all. It looks, to an eye trained for urban markers, like a suburb which has a size problem and unusual industrial impact. Few commercial corridors exist in relation to the sprawling expanse of yarded homes; of those which do exist, even fewer…
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My Airbnb: Hostess with the Someness
Read more: My Airbnb: Hostess with the SomenessI lived in diaspora from 2011-2014, traveling extensively while working internationally and engaging in barter agreements for housing while I went through my first post-bac program. When I entered my current graduate degree program and finally settled into my own place again, I decided that I would enjoy visitors through Airbnb, and it would additionally…
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Not Like Silver: Exploring Hell’s Fire
Read more: Not Like Silver: Exploring Hell’s FireThe Book of Watchers within I Enoch strikes the reader as a vengeful departure from its more neutral netherworldly predecessors, its pits of fire casting doubt on the frequently maintained assertion “that there is no belief in life after death in Judaism,” much less a “Hell” as Christianity has come to define it.[1] This perception,…
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The Master’s Tools: Subversive Planning in the Self-Help Revolution
Read more: The Master’s Tools: Subversive Planning in the Self-Help RevolutionNobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a [hu]man, you take it.-Malcolm X Introduction There is no planning that is separate from the essential function to make the human experience better: this inherently requires equity and justice. There are many divergent beliefs in how “better” may…
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Geddes Out of Tucson: A Desert Region and Its City
Read more: Geddes Out of Tucson: A Desert Region and Its CityIntroduction This article considers Tucson, Arizona through the lens of Patrick Geddes’ urban philosophy and methods. It is organized within his trinity rubric of lieu, travail and famille, first presenting a sampling of background information not meant to be exhaustive, but to create an impression of the city. This information entails primarily ethnographic observation, or…
