Gender as Forms of Value (1984)
Is gender a form of value, a form of capital? This paper, written in 1984, is not just a critique of superficial and essentialist ideas of gender, but also an attempt to understand gender from the specific viewpoint of value and commodity analysis. Instead of asking what follows from gender and how gender is performed, […]
Counter-revolution
Stalin’s killings created the first holocaust, destroying a whole generation of revolutionaries, the bloodiest counter-revolution so far in history. Victor Serge (summary), in Susan Weissman: The Course is Set on Hope,Verso, London, 2001. Victor Serge (1890-1947) was a democratically oriented French-Russian left-wing intellectual, who was persecuted first in France, and later in the Soviet Union. […]
Stereophile – defending music?
Are stereo and sound equipment companies, and magazines that review their equipment, out to maximize music – or money? What is their primary interest, the product or the profit? This debate has flared up again, related to Stereophile‘s 50 years anniversary, cf http://www.stereophile.com/content/50-years-stereophile The accusation from the critics is that Stereophile has turned out to […]
Blessings to Barks
According to the foreword by Donald Ault in the new Fantagraphics Books series “Donald Duck – Lost in the Andes – by Carl Barks” (2011) , Barks – not Disney – was the one who invented most of the Donald Duck scenery and characters, including Uncle Scrooge. “Barks was perhaps the most widely read but […]
Deathworld
A kind of thought ray has a world locked up in deadly battle with the human colonizers. The basic theme of Harry Harrison’s Deathworld (1960) has not lost its relevance, and the novel makes for a good reread, and although not great literature, it is up from e g his Stainless steel character. The man […]
Goffman en gang til
Erving Goffman (1922-82) var en av de store sosiologene i det tyvende århundret, ved siden av Robert Merton, og noen få andre, slik jeg ser det. Derfor siterer jeg ham, om maskulinitet og skam, på toppen av hjemmesiden. Noen mener at Goffman var evig mistroisk, og dessuten nokså markkrypersk og uteoretisk. Han prøvde seg som […]
Feminism in disrespute?
Under the heading, Does feminism have a bad reputation?, almost 50 participants attended the start conference of the new Feminist Forum at the University of Oslo, at Chateau Neuf Nov 26, with presentations by Charlotte Myrbråten, former editor of the feminist journal Fett, and myself. Mostly students, about a quarter men. The debate concerned whether […]
Gender equality and quality of life – data base v5
Ever since the “Gender equality and quality of life” survey results came in, in 2007, I have worked with improvements of the data base. Version 5 of the data base has now been constructed and internally tested, eliminating errors. The data base versions 1-4 constructed the main gender equality indexes, as well as easier access […]
Woman as gift
Why use time and resources for a phd course on “archaic” gift exchange theory, outlined by nowadays somewhat “obscure” theorists like French structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss? Because, perhaps, there was “something in it”? Something true, across sciences? Something with women “between” men, not just “opposed to” men? This course enlists main University of Oslo professors as […]
Talking heads revisited
Although I listened a lot to Talking heads when their music appeared in the late 1970s, I was already in my late twenties, and my main or “formative” experience was from the late 1960s, so this was a kind of repeat of what I had heard before. It was only gradually that I came to […]