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The Hedonism of the Protagoras Reconsidered

C. C. W. Taylor

in Pleasure, Mind, and Soul: Selected Papers in Ancient Philosophy

This chapter reconsiders the question of whether Socrates is represented in the Protagoras as maintaining some version of hedonism in his own person, or merely arguing ad hominem that the sophists ... More

This chapter reconsiders the question of whether Socrates is represented in the Protagoras as maintaining some version of hedonism in his own person, or merely arguing ad hominem that the sophists and/or ordinary people are committed to hedonism. While the author had previously maintained the former, the present chapter argues — by close attention to the details of the text — that Plato deliberately leaves the question open. It is suggested that he does so because the cognitive theory of the early dialogues needs to be supplemented by an account of the good, and that he wished to explore the theory that pleasure is the good without explicitly endorsing it.Less

Clock Times in Everyday Lives

Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift

in Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800

‘Everyday life’ and ‘ordinary people’ refer to a broad collection of non-elite people, actions, and places that involve large amounts of temporal specialization in conducting activities out of ... More

‘Everyday life’ and ‘ordinary people’ refer to a broad collection of non-elite people, actions, and places that involve large amounts of temporal specialization in conducting activities out of necessity. There is a need to re-establish the societal and geographical dimensions of everyday clock time, such as time as a resource for expressing time and other related purposes, since this is often taken for granted. This chapter focuses on the use of clock-time in everyday situations and the precision attributed to clock-time practices in early modern England. Attention is drawn to everyday temporal communities wherein clock-time practices contribute to ‘non-disciplinary’ aspects of time and society, instead of to the specialized communities that make use of specific clock times or to disciplinary organizations that produce formal documentation.Less

The Quiz Show and ‘Ordinary’ People as Television Performers

Su Holmes

in The Quiz Show

Long before reality TV, ‘ordinary’ people provided a core spectacle in the quiz show — the genre invites ‘ordinary’ people into the ‘special’ space of television. This chapter examines how this ... More

Long before reality TV, ‘ordinary’ people provided a core spectacle in the quiz show — the genre invites ‘ordinary’ people into the ‘special’ space of television. This chapter examines how this ‘ordinariness’ is necessarily a construction, and how this is played out within the particular generic framework of the quiz show. It examines the delimited roles on offer to the contestant (the relations of power in which they perform in the genre), and explores instances when contestants seek to disrupt the cultural rules of the game space. The chapter then examines how (much like reality TV today), there has always been a particular anxiety surrounding discourses of ‘authenticity’ where the quiz show contestant is concerned. The chapter ends by considering the predominance of white males in the genre, examining the marginalisation of women, and the (even greater) marginalisation of contestants from ethnic minorities.Less

Avoidance of Offspring (III): The Pastoral Picture

Peter Biller

in The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought

This chapter reviews medieval texts which are traces of priests dealing with ordinary people, looking at some examples from three periods, around 900, 1200, and 1300. It covers the Two books on ... More

This chapter reviews medieval texts which are traces of priests dealing with ordinary people, looking at some examples from three periods, around 900, 1200, and 1300. It covers the Two books on synodal cases and ecclesiastical disciplines written in 906 by a Rhinelander, Regino of Prüm, and pastoral texts.Less

Will the Real Expert Please Stand Up?

in The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows

This chapter focuses on the group or class of talk-show guests more peripheral to the “experts” genre. Why do experts participate in a forum that often seems ill suited—even hostile—to rational ... More

This chapter focuses on the group or class of talk-show guests more peripheral to the “experts” genre. Why do experts participate in a forum that often seems ill suited—even hostile—to rational discussion and debate? How is expertise packaged and sold for mass consumption? How does the clash of agendas between producers and guests play itself out when the guests are experts rather than ordinary people? Experts—and particularly intellectuals—occupy a paradoxical position in American society. As Goldfarb notes, democracies need the specialized knowledge and creative capacities that intellectuals and other experts contribute because the democratic process requires an informed and critical citizenry, yet experts are still viewed with suspicion since hierarchy is questioned as a matter of fundamental principle. In the United States, this conflict dates back to the earliest years of colonial development, and it became more pronounced in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution.Less

Public or Plebs: The Changing Meaning of ‘the Commons’, 1381–1549

John Watts

in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies

A distinctive feature of English history from the later 14th century to the middle of the 16th is the recurrence of mass popular insurrections presenting collective grievances to the king. In 1381, ... More

A distinctive feature of English history from the later 14th century to the middle of the 16th is the recurrence of mass popular insurrections presenting collective grievances to the king. In 1381, 1450, and 1497, the rebels, or petitioners, marched on London to obtain redress. Similar moves were planned, but headed off, in 1536 and perhaps also 1549. In each rising the leaders stressed their loyalty to the king, their concern with the common welfare of the realm, and their representation of common opinion. After 1381 they also enunciated a clear sense of public duty. While the government responded punitively in the aftermath of each insurrection, its initial reactions were typically more muted. In part, this was pragmatism — a reflection of the sheer difficulty of countering popular revolt when the whole political and military apparatus depended so heavily on the compliance of local people; but it was also a tacit recognition that displays of common dissatisfaction possessed some legitimacy. If remedy was sought by the ‘commons’, or ‘commoners’, or ‘community’, whether they rose for truth, freedom, the honour and welfare of the king, or the common weal or the commonwealth, the ruler might feel an obligation to listen. This chapter focuses on the claim on the part of the participants to be, and to represent, the ‘commons’. It argues that the full significance of this claim has not been widely appreciated; that the changing meanings of ‘common’ terminology have gone unrecognized; and that the consequences of these changes have been under-explored.Less

Trash, Class, and Cultural Hierarchy

in The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows

There are serious problems with talk shows: They give ordinary people a voice, but only a certain kind of voice, only under certain conditions, and only according to certain rules. In Foucauldian ... More

There are serious problems with talk shows: They give ordinary people a voice, but only a certain kind of voice, only under certain conditions, and only according to certain rules. In Foucauldian terms, they extend the visibility of marginalized groups, but the nature of this visibility simultaneously creates fresh opportunities for marginalization. At the same time, the critical condemnation of the genre as trashy and debased is not any less classifying than the genre's initial stereotypical association of emotional and physical expressiveness with ordinary people. However much a matter of consensus, this condemnation further contributes to the marginalization of guests when it confuses middle-class notions of civility with morality and when it takes for granted a set of cultural codes in which divisions of taste mask and reinforce divisions of class. There are serious problems with talk shows, but there are serious problems with the “respectable” media, too, and even more serious problems with society at large.Less

Talk as Work: Routinizing the Production Process

in The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows

Producers strive to elicit the money shot because they require visible evidence of a guest's emotional state. At the same time, because any one producer has only five or six days to prepare for a ... More

Producers strive to elicit the money shot because they require visible evidence of a guest's emotional state. At the same time, because any one producer has only five or six days to prepare for a show, producers must make these seemingly spontaneous and unpredictable moments predictable and routine. Organizations routinize tasks whenever possible in order to facilitate the control of work. Routinization would seem especially important—albeit especially challenging—when the work involves the intentional orchestration of emotional or volatile situations. Thus, producers employ a variety of strategies and practices to streamline the difficult process of putting ordinary people on television. In doing so, they draw largely on the codes and conventions of journalism as well as the production of late-night talk shows. While the parallels to late-night talk are, perhaps, more obvious (daytime talk merely replacing celebrity guests with ordinary people), the production of daytime talk is also systematically organized behind the scenes much like the production of news.Less

Ordinary Americans and Good Debate

Michael S. Evans

in Seeking Good Debate: "Religion, Science, and Conflict in American Public Life"

This chapter argues that representatives and ordinary people disagree over what counts as good debate, refuting the explanation that representatives do what they do because ordinary people want them ... More

This chapter argues that representatives and ordinary people disagree over what counts as good debate, refuting the explanation that representatives do what they do because ordinary people want them to do it. In contrast to representatives, ordinary people think that good debate means engagement and deliberation. The key problem in these debates is that representatives participate in ways that conflict with what ordinary persons expect. The result is that ordinary persons negatively evaluate representatives and debates on normative grounds. For example, elected politicians are discounted in public debate because they are seen as incapable or unwilling to engage meaningfully with serious issues.Less

The Philosophy of Ordinary People

Adam Bronson

in One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan

In the late forties, Science of Thought conducted statistical surveys and interviews, and produced content analyses of popular movies, novels, and comic books in an unusual experiment to probe the ... More

In the late forties, Science of Thought conducted statistical surveys and interviews, and produced content analyses of popular movies, novels, and comic books in an unusual experiment to probe the mind of the “common man.” This was part of the early interdisciplinary research project on the “Philosophy of Ordinary People,” (Hitobito no tetsugaku). The project was significant as an experiment in redefining the scope of philosophy in postwar Japan. Researchers asserted that the implicit “philosophy” (tetsugaku) that structured the everyday life of a fireman, for example, was no less worthy of intellectual exegesis than the works of famous philosophers. The results of their investigation suggested that “common folks” were generally pragmatic thinkers, yet the empirical results of their research were less important than their focus on blurring the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow culture by treating daily life as a series of philosophical dilemmas.Less

The normality of everyday ‘hate crime’

Paul Iganski

in 'Hate crime' and the city

The experiences of victims show that in general, ‘hate crime’ offenders are not an aberration, or politically motivated extremists confined to the margins of society. Instead, many are ‘ordinary’ ... More

The experiences of victims show that in general, ‘hate crime’ offenders are not an aberration, or politically motivated extremists confined to the margins of society. Instead, many are ‘ordinary’ people who offend in the unfolding contexts of their everyday lives. The ordinariness of offenders and offending is arguably a further key dimension in the conceptualisation of ‘hate crime’, when victims' experiences are placed at the centre of understanding about ‘hate crime’. This line of argument is pursued in this chapter in the spirit of conceptualising ‘hate crime’ as a scholarly domain characterised by an analysis of the commonalities and differences between various forms of oppressive violence. In that spirit, this chapter unravels the situational dynamics of anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and other racist incidents, incidents against people with a disability and homophobic incidents. It illuminates the connections between background structure and the foreground of offender action in cases of ‘hate crime’, providing the missing link between the macro-societal ideological edifice and the micro-level actions of offenders.Less

Reenvisioning Japan

Simon Partner

in Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer

This chapter focuses on the significant new developments after the war—developments that were the product of a catastrophic defeat attributable in part to the failure of Japanese technology. It ... More

This chapter focuses on the significant new developments after the war—developments that were the product of a catastrophic defeat attributable in part to the failure of Japanese technology. It explores the visions that established business leaders, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs, as well as ordinary Japanese people, developed during the formative years of the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). The chapter explains that during these early postwar years, Japanese businessmen and others began quite consciously to search for the keys to the immense prosperity of the United States—a prosperity which was all the more tantalizing given its contrast with life in a Japan prostrate from defeat. It notes that although these visions were diverse and often contested, key protagonists in this story focused on a few common themes which were to unlock, for them, the gates to prosperity.Less

‘Asking the Audience’: Quiz Shows and Their Viewers

Su Holmes

in The Quiz Show

Although quiz shows often encourage us to ‘play’ along, and they encode the participation of the audience into their textual form, there have been virtually no audience studies in this sphere. This ... More

Although quiz shows often encourage us to ‘play’ along, and they encode the participation of the audience into their textual form, there have been virtually no audience studies in this sphere. This chapter seeks to address this neglect. Moving from the early broadcast origins of the quiz show up until the advent of ‘interactive’ television, it considers the ways in which the viewer at home has been encouraged to participate. It then moves on to explore how fan cultures on the internet offer insights into audience interaction with the quiz show (and its cultural politics). But as such fans are also often contestants, the chapter returns to the questions of ‘performance’ and ‘authenticity’ examined in Chapter 5.Less

Films about ordinary people: the Japanese home drama and virtual ethnography

Catherine Russell

in Beyond text?: Critical practices and sensory anthropology

This chapter frames the Japanese cinema and TV genre of ‘home drama’ shomin-geki,, as a sensory mode of ethnography about ‘ordinary people’, which is nevertheless virtual—a phantasmagoria of cultural ... More

This chapter frames the Japanese cinema and TV genre of ‘home drama’ shomin-geki,, as a sensory mode of ethnography about ‘ordinary people’, which is nevertheless virtual—a phantasmagoria of cultural practices and feelings. Through a critical ‘reading against the grain’ of this genre and particularly the works of Naruse Mikio as examples of ‘vernacular modernism’, it shows how these films provides a valuable portrait of modern Japanese culture as it imagined itself to be.Less

Inside the Fun House

in The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows

Talk shows tend to become news for much the same reasons that ordinary people become news—because they have done something extraordinary, deviant, or bizarre. Daytime talk shows were rarely in the ... More

Talk shows tend to become news for much the same reasons that ordinary people become news—because they have done something extraordinary, deviant, or bizarre. Daytime talk shows were rarely in the headlines until the Jenny Jones murder, and, at that point, the coverage was anything but flattering. Guests who sue talk shows make the news, as do those who admit faking their stories. Otherwise, journalists and media critics rarely talk about talk-show guests except to put them down or to discuss the lamentable trend toward “manufactured celebrity” that guests supposedly represent. Guests on conflict-based shows also complain about specific aspects of their experiences, expressing anger or frustration when the outcome of confrontation does not go their way or support their version of events. A variation on this theme occurs when guests do not get the rewards or compensation that they expect in exchange for engaging in a confrontation.Less

Edward Schatz on Manar Shorbagy

Virginia R. Domínguez and Jane C. Desmond (eds)

in Global Perspectives on the United States: Pro-Americanism, Anti-Americanism, and the Discourses Between

This essay is a response to Manar Shorbagy’s contribution in this book, Global Perspectives on the United States. It argues that Shorbagy is correct in stating that U.S. policy in the region produces ... More

This essay is a response to Manar Shorbagy’s contribution in this book, Global Perspectives on the United States. It argues that Shorbagy is correct in stating that U.S. policy in the region produces the very resistance to its policies that it seeks to undermine, but it also wants to extend the argument beyond analysis of policies. Schatz, for example, insists that ordinary people and political actors form their opinions and pursue their agendas not solely based on policy calculations, and he stresses that this is more important than Shorbagy’s essay presents. He asks several questions in his response to Shorbagy’s analysis of Kefaya: (1) Is Kefaya likely to survive the Obama Administration, the next U.S. president, their different foreign policy choices, and at times very different rhetoric, given its trans-ideological nature uniting Islamists and secular democrats? (2) Will Kefaya need to move beyond critiques of “foreign threats and political despotism” and demonstrate its efficacy to the broader public? And (3) is it possible that the new U.S. administration could engineer new modes of engagement in the region that are much less beholden to old patterns of behavior?Less