Friday, January 7, 2011

A Post of Links

First up, over at Adam's blog, we have excellent resource guide to critical animal studies. I know many of you probably know a lot of those things, but for anyone trying to get an handle on critical animal studies, you might want to go and take a look. Plus, some of you more experienced types might still find resources you didn't know existed.

I don't mean to turn this into an Adam themed post, but when someone delivers, they deliver. If you remember my post on plants, well Adam has two links worth resharing. The first is a call for papers from PAN about an issue on "Plant Ethics". I don't think I have the time to write something more publishable for them, but I think some of you might be interested. Also, Adam shared this TED talk on the roots of plant intelligence. If you want to see my thoughts on it, read the comment section of my plant post.

Jason Read has an excellent review of Benjamin Noys' The Persistence of the Negative. Noys has a short response up here. I want to say more. I come out of a similar intellectual tradition as Jason Read, so I definitely want to check out Noys' book.

This a reminder that the deadline for Speculations II is tomorrow.

Mike Konczal has an interesting post on why we saw an explosion in the prison population in the 1970s, a trend that has only continued. Most of the stuff I have read on this subject has tended to focus on things like the creation of the War on Crime and the War on Drugs. And while that is no doubt correct, that is less of an explanation than another symptom. Konczal took a look at a lot of 70s conservative criminology recently, and what emerges is an economic and policy-oriented belief in what I would call the ontological production of the criminal. That is to say, there strongly emerges a belief that there is a distinct being that is a criminal, and the only appropriate response is to lock that person away. Anyway, read the link to find out what the criminologists were actually saying.

Graham Harman has had a couple of posts on the success of open-source publishing. See here, here, and most importantly here. Stuart Elden has an important follow-up here (also read the comment there). Two thoughts. The first is that I largely agree with the need for more academic open source publishing. The problem is that those of us who are most junior have the most pressure to not engage in open source. And the more senior the person, the more often they have developed consistent channels of publications that tend to not want to break from. The second point about getting away from issues is something that Adam Kotsko promoted before, and that Peter disagreed with before. That Stuart and Peter would be on the same side surprises absolutely nobody. That Adam and Graham are on the same side, well, all I can say is Awkward (Sorry, sometimes I think I am funny).

The guy who runs this blog suggested I post this song. It's been a long time since I sat down and just listened to Elliot Smith. Probably time to do so again, I think I am immune to his angst these days.