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Category: Culture

Published May 19, 2011

Ceci n’est pas un Post About Dominique Strauss-Kahn

From The Economist’s Schumpeter blog:

“Michel Foucault was a colossal bore — and a bore, moreover, who encouraged the practice of seeing history exclusively in terms of the exploitation of an ever-multiplying band of victims even as living standards rose to unprecedented levels. Louis Althusser was a wife-killing buffoon. Pierre Bourdieu labored the obvious. Jacques Lacan produced incomprehensible bilge. (France has produced its share of greats, of course, most notably Raymond Aron, but they are routinely ignored).

Yet Foucault et al. look like giants compared with the current crop of intellectuals, if the commentary on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair is anything to go by. Bernard Henri-Lévy (…) has written a paean of praise to his friend, DSK, which is remarkable for its lack of sympathy for the unfortunate Muslim immigrant at the heart of the affair.”

Continue readingCeci n’est pas un Post About Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Published January 13, 2011

On “Chinese” Mothers (Updated)

Because my wife (and erstwhile coauthor) is Chinese-American, some people have asked me over the last few days what I thought of Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal piece last weekend trying to explain the superiority of Chinese mothers.

For the record, even though my wife and I were “parented” in (sometimes very) different ways, we more or less got to the same point, so I really have no particular insight about parenting, Chinese or otherwise.

I had promised myself I wouldn’t give any attention to what I see as Amy Chua’s all-too-obvious play to sell more books, but The Last Psychiatrist has a post that is too good not to link to about Chua’s piece.

The Last Psychiatrist’s point is that Amy Chua isn’t trying to raise children, she’s trying to raise children who will get into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Heaven forbid they should “only” get into Cornell or Duke.

The best parts of The Last Psychiatrist’s post are:

Continue readingOn “Chinese” Mothers (Updated)
Published January 5, 2011

When Geography Shapes Culture and Institutions

The Economist‘s Democracy in America blogs has an interesting post on how Nevada has come to specialize in sin:

“What was to be the good or service that [Nevada] could provide relatively (as opposed to absolutely) more efficiently than any other place? The state has little water, so agriculture was hardly the likely answer. In fact, there seemed to be no obvious answer at all. Until the penny dropped. The answer was legislative: “We created our own comparative advantage; we embraced sin,” says Mr Herzik. It started with prize fighting (think of the now-legendary bout between Jack Johnson and James Jeffries in Reno on Indpendence Day in 1910). Then came easy divorce. Then came gambling. And, of course, prostitution, which is legal in all of Nevada’s rural counties (although it can allegedly be found even in cities such as Las Vegas). Nevada’s economy today is based on sin. For example, about half of the state’s revenue comes, directly or indirectly, from gambling in the form of casino taxes or the sales taxes of tourists.”

This is a nice example of how geography can influence institutions and, eventually, culture. But the reasoning really does beg the question of why neighboring Utah, which as far as I know is as resource-poor as Nevada, ended up becoming almost the complete opposite as regards its culture and institutions?

Generally speaking, however, it looks as though institutions are a more important determinant of economic development than geography, as per this paper.