The newest edition of Introduction to Sociology: 3rd Canadian Edition was published today by BCcampus. It is a free Open Education Resource available in various formats on the BCcampus website. Blurb from the back pages: The Third Canadian Edition of Introduction to Sociology, represents a thorough, comprehensive revision of the previous editions to update the content … Continue reading
Carolyn and I, and I am sure many other of his former students, were sad to hear of Alan’s passing last March. We were both profoundly affected by his classes on the philosophy of environment, technology and Eastern religion in the mid-1980s. Much later I came back and interviewed him on the topic of Aikido … Continue reading
Some concluding thoughts to follow up on my last post On Experimentation in Aikido. Some of the more vexing issues that come up with regard to the formal or ritualistic aspects of training in Aikido and other martial arts can be illuminated if we consider the difference between learning things cognitively and learning things corporeally. … Continue reading
The Aikido seminar or Gashuku always has the feel of a totemic gathering of the tribes in which one gets to meet and practice with members of other dojos and sometimes try different styles or lineages of Aikido. Some of them stand out as occasions where one not only refines technique or learns principles but … Continue reading
‘Truth in the Martial Arts.’ Introduction to a paper delivered at the Martial Arts Studies conference in Cardiff Wales, July 19-21, 2016 Part of my interest in writing this paper was to take an opportunity to think about Giorgio Agamben’s concept of a form-of-life. Despite its apparent affinity to sociological concepts like Marx’s species being … Continue reading
It is tempting in this regard to think of autism as one of the limits of sociology, a phenomenon where the sociological discourse must fall silent. Continue reading
One of the three components that defined the original CSPT Program mentioned by Rob Walker at the Roundtable discussion on Friday was “theory.” As he noted theory is an ambiguous signifier meaning different things to different types of thinkers. In CSPT it has generally meant a predilection for continental European traditions of theory rather than … Continue reading
Jean Baudrillard has always been a doppelganger for me when it comes to the study of contemporary media. For good or ill, he is one of the chief architects of the joyful nihilism which seems a reasonable fallback stance to take with regard to life in the mediadrome. This is so when one thinks for … Continue reading
I was reminded, when Peyman began speaking about the student sit ins in Tehran in 1981 that eventually lead to his exile from Iran, of the dreamlike qualities of the heroine’s story in Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet. During the military occupation of the university in Mexico City in 1968 (i.e. UNAM), Bolaño’s heroine Auxilio Lacouture hides … Continue reading
Gilles Deleuze makes a distinction between a “plane of consistence” and a “plane of organization” which is extremely suggestive for trying to think through the conflict between forms of life and the powers that diminish life. It is also extremely suggestive for the study of Aikido, and vice versa. Like most of Deleuze’s concepts these … Continue reading
I got Roberto Bolaño’s most recent book for my birthday, in hard cover no less, so I thought I’d try to write a sociological book review to get some more mileage out of it. As the book reviews have already noted, The Third Reich was written in 1989 and discovered in a drawer after Bolaño … Continue reading
Why did Nietzsche like Carmen? That is what I found myself thinking about on Valentine’s Day at the dress rehearsal production of Bizet’s Carmen, (Pacific Opera Company), hemmed in on all sides by a packed crowd of teenagers from various private schools and Girl Guide brigades of the City of Victoria. The potential for teenage … Continue reading
Alan Drengson`s website: http://alandrengson.com/ Bill Little: You taught a course in the philosophy department at the University of Victoria called an Introduction to Eastern Philosophy in which you sometimes used to lecture on Aikido. If philosophy literally means ‘the love of knowledge or wisdom’, what kind of knowledge is Aikido? What lessons can we learn … Continue reading
“Songs are a shaman’s most highly prized possessions, the vehicles of his powers and the repositories of his knowledge. They are usually sung under the influence of a hallucinogenic brew (shori) made from lianas of the banisteriopsis family and a shrub, psychotria viridis. Learning to be a shaman is learning to sing, to intone the … Continue reading
Can one, and how can one think about alternative models of community today? What happened to the earnest debates about “alternative communities” and why do those discussions often strike us as a kind of “rosy blush that is now irretrievably fading”? One plank of contemporary political realism is that the modern standard of living depends … Continue reading
“The Greatness of the country: real. The anger: real. The pain: too real.” — Roger Rosenblatt, Time Magazine
William Little's Sociology Web Page 