Technology and the Spaces Between Us
Humanity and the digital world
I remember that afternoon distinctly. It was an overcast spring afternoon and the light was soft and cast beautiful shadows. I was sitting having a cup of qehvah on a side street of Main Market, Lahore, the only woman in a street filled with men. Most of them didn’t know how to look at me, or how to read me. Either they would smirk …
Moral Sentiment and Moral Judgment after the Paris Attacks
On the problem of selective solidarity
Ever since the dust began to clear after what President Hollande rightfully called “the horror” of Friday night, my media consumption — yes, especially my Facebook feed (constantly refreshed with reflections from Public Seminar) …
The Tragedy of the 2015 Turkish Elections
Examining the AKP victory
The November 2015 election brought a landslide victory to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), increasing its vote almost nine points in 5 months. This surprising comeback would be hard to explain in an ordinary situation where such drastic shifts in voting in a short time period would not be expected. However, it …
Neoliberal B Team Win Canadian Election
Assessing the conservative defeat
The decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was the big news of the 2015 Canadian election. Harper resigned as party leader, and the dirty laundry of his heavily controlled campaign is now being aired publicly. The Harper reelection campaign drew deeply on racist and Islamaphobic politics, attacking a Federal Court of Appeal decision …
Replication Problems in Psychology: Crisis, Tempest in a Teapot, or Opportunity?
An assessment of the field
In late August 2015 an article appeared in the New York Times with a loaded headline: Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says. The article reported on a recent publication in the journal Science, which raised …
Letters From St. Petersburg, Part I
Social justice in the Maidan movement in Ukraine
Many researchers analyze the Maidan movement as a part of recent waves of protests shaking the world time and again. However, despite the similarities behind all these movements such as populist identities, anti-state agendas, and more, there is one crucial difference between the movements in the post-socialist world and protest movements in other countries – this difference concerns the social climate. …
The Disability Paradox
Further thoughts on inequality, disability, and the imaginal
Do you have a disability? Do you want to work? This seemingly innocent pairing of questions should immediately raise a red flag, for it is technically oxymoronic: in the United States, the disabled, by definition, are those who cannot work, at least in any significant sense. Granted, disability falls on a continuum, and answering to this continuum is a parallel benefits scheme for some workers — specifically, those whose disabilities have resulted from …