Eric L. Gans on Language, Culture, God, and the Market
On the weekend of 19-21 June 2009 the University of Ottawa hosted the Third Annual Generative Anthropology Summer Conference. In 1990s I attended scores of academic conferences, for reasons that now strike me as poor, if not deluded. I confess that, in the last ten years, I have been allergic to these usually dreary affairs, during which the tweedy set scurries beetle-like from one set of unintelligible papers to another. Or rather, the papers are all too intelligible, affirming the narrow set of Leftwing clichés about group-identity and oppression. I knew, however, that the Ottawa affair would be quite different – small, focused, and refreshingly un-postmodern. It was quite likely that the postures and vanities of postmodernism would come under objective analysis. (They did.) But what is “Generative Anthropology” (abbreviated as “GA”) and why should people of a conservative temperament take an interest in it? I will begin with a brief genealogy of “GA.”
Better to Die Under Obama than to Live Under Bush
Here's a bit of humor from the French blog Le Conservateur. To understand it, you should know a little about Christophe Girard. He is adjunct mayor for cultural affairs under Pierre Delanoé, mayor of Paris. Both men are openly gay.
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