Hello All:
And welcome to the Writing 50 blog.
I will be asking you to post to this blog frequently. Your posts will serve as a basis for class discussion and a collection point for ideas and quotations for your writing.
PLEASE NOTE: This blog is in public space. Anyone can see it. If you have concerns about your privacy, don't use your real name here. Make up something and let me know what it is.
When you post something here, it will not necessarily immediately appear on the blog. I check out all posts to make sure they are appropriate for our purposes.
Again: Welcome to the Writing 50 Blog.
Nick
Hi all:
For this entry, read "The True Cost of Gadgets."
Find a quotation from the article that interests you, or seems most
important, or you have a question about.
Type it into the comment box and then add a few lines saying why you
picked this quotation.
For me the Suzuki article is important because it helps me remember how
much things have changed in the last two decade and also points to the
broader ecological and environmental consequences of consumerism.
It's pretty easy to read.
Hi all:
Please read "Setting the Course," pages 15 to 30 in the Reader.
This is an historical piece taken from the best history of the
development of consumer society that I have yet to find.
You will find a lot of historical facts. Don't worry about that. You
don't have to memorize them. Instead let your imagination work on the
examples. See if you can begin to feel what it was like to shop, say,
in the 19th century, and how that differs from shopping today. And pay
attention to the ideas or assertions Cross throws out about the nature
of the consumer society, how for example it functioned in a democracy of
goods against class conflict.
When you are finished reading, pick a quotation you think important and
write a few lines about why you picked it. Or paraphrase one of Cross's
ideas or examples and write about that and why you find it important.
Thank you.
Nick
Hi all:
"Why the Self is Empty" is an academic article. It's
too long, the print is too small, its full of citations and names you
won't (and don't have to) know.
Forget that stuff and read for
the main idea. Cushman is trying to talk about how consumerism shaped
identity as older and more traditional forms of identity formation
slipped away.
Do as you did with the last blog comment. Either
pick a quotation, type it in, and then write a few lines saying why you
think it important or, more generally, try to paraphrase the main point
of the article in a paragraph or so.
Thank
you.
Nick
Hi all:
This article is by Zygmunt Bauman. I have never had any
heroes (except maybe for Micky Mantle and Bob Dylan). But now Bauman is
my hero, not so much for what he has to say about consumer society, but
because he is still saying lively, interesting stuff at 85 years of
age. I can only hope my brain works as well as his at 85.
He is a
pretty astute observer of consumer society. Formerly an academic
sociologist, he is widely read in sociology and other stuff. In this
article he brings up Nietzsche. Not the usual sociological stuff.
You
have to take time with his writing. It's not fast food; you can't just
swallow it down on the go. You have to sit down and chew a little.
Again,
as with previous posts to the blog, pick an interesting quotation, type
it in, and write a few lines about why you picked it. Or try to
paraphrase his line of thinking. You can of course include a quotation
in this too.
Nick
Hi all:
By this point, we have done a good deal of reading about
and discussing of the consumer society.
In order to get you to
"brainstorm" a bit and to get an idea of what you might like to say
about what we have read and discussed, I would like you to write the
first two paragraphs of your paper 1. Of course, these may not be your
first two paragraphs when you get around to writing the real rough
draft.
Also don't try to write a two paragraph paper. Try to
write an actual start, leaving where the thing might from there rather
open ended.
Nick
