By: Chris Ellis on January 30, 2014
The Truman Show stars Jim Carry as an insurance salesman whose life since birth is actually an elaborate TV show watched by millions. NY Times writer David Brooks might have had this movie in mind when he wrote Social Animals. He takes the latest developments in psychology, human development, anthropology and neuroscience and weaves them…
By: Ashley Goad on January 28, 2014
For years I heard my son, Clint, a soldier in the 173rd Airborne, speak of “collateral damage.” I cringed every time he said the phrase, knowing he used the words to describe an unintended consequence of an armed intervention. In plain speak, though it was not planned, innocent people lost their lives. Reading Zygmunt Bauman’s Collateral Damage:…
By: Clint Baldwin on January 27, 2014
To my recollection, I first encountered Zygmunt Bauman in 1996 through reading Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace. As I remember, I appreciated what I was able to encounter of Bauman there. I subsequently came across Bauman more frequently in readings and really appreciated his Globalization: The Human Consequences. It was some time after he wrote Globalization and as we…
By: Clint Baldwin on January 27, 2014
What “makes” you think the way that you do? What orientations do you typically adhere to without even considering that you do so? What subconsciously drives your thinking and your actions? Charles Taylor in Modern Social Imaginaries explores facets of these very questions. Taylor, suggests that ideas drive actions which lead to the creation of…
By: Carol McLaughlin on January 26, 2014
Three words describe my learning and capture my response to Zygmunt Bauman’s work in Collateral Damage: sobering, overwhelmed and pondering. The dominant word, the one with the greatest weight, the one that is “sitting” on my chest is sobering. This one word reflects both a deepening awareness and reveals my response to Bauman’s light on…
By: Mark Steele on January 26, 2014
Most people are concerned about the environment and the future of the earth’s ecology and health. Much has been said about environmental warming, the growing pollution in China, the growing population of the earth and the earths ability to support the growth and pollution. Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in their book Action Hope How…
By: rhbaker275 on January 26, 2014
There is surely something within any decent, caring, unpretentious, human being that has lived, perhaps thrived prosperously or eked out a livelihood in their own social order that recoils and is reviled by the concept of “collateral damage” as presented by Zygmunt Bauman in the introduction to Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age.”…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on January 25, 2014
Let me begin with an apology for my tardiness on this post. I was in Orlando representing GFU and GFES at a leaders conference from Tuesday till Thursday night. My book failed to arrive before I left and did not arrive till Thursday. My day was packed Friday with me teaching Friday evening. I here…
By: Miriam Mendez on January 25, 2014
We often complain about the trivial things that inconvenience our daily routine (i.e. we got whole milk instead of soy milk in our coffee order; we forgot the power cord to our GPS and now we have to rely on our brain to get us to our destination; the wind blew the cable out and…
By: Raphael Samuel on January 25, 2014
A few years ago, I was on my way home from work listening to Christian radio. A feature that afternoon was a program call, “Missions network news.” This is a brief news cast highlighting what God is doing through the efforts of his people around the world. That afternoon the spotlight was on a woman…
By: Richard Volzke on January 25, 2014
In the early 90’s, I visited Turkey while in the military. During my visit to Turkey, I witnessed an impoverished young boy steal a piece of fruit from a fruit stand and took off running. The vendor began yelling at the boy in Arabic, and as the vendor was yelling and running after the boy…
By: Liz Linssen on January 24, 2014
A new report by Oxfam has found that a tiny elite owns the wealth of half of the world’s population. The report, entitled “Working for the few” shows that 85 of the world’s richest people own the same amount of wealth as half the world’s population. The report was released ahead of this week’s World…
By: John Woodward on January 24, 2014
Six years ago, my wife and I moved to Omaha. We were excited for a change in life (new jobs, new start). We decided, as part of our downsizing, we would locate in a newer suburb where young families gravitated, where we’d have opportunity to develop new friendships in a new neighborhood. We eagerly moved…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on January 24, 2014
Collateral Damage: Social inequality in a Global Age by Zygmount Bauman offers deep insight into the ways the global society has been dealing with social inequality. In the introduction, the author explained social inequality using engineering metaphors: one is fuse, the weakest part of an electrical circuit that is designed to blow as a safety…
By: Bill Dobrenen on January 24, 2014
Godward faith and human reason have been wrestling with each other for millennia. Which of these philosophies will ultimately lead humanity to its evolutionary finale? Are we getting better and better as a species, as created beings. Or are we devolving with time and with the unfolding of modernity? Zygmunt Bauman writes expertly in this…
By: Julie Dodge on January 24, 2014
As I soothe my slightly taxed brain, it begins to make sense to me that we were asked to follow up Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries[1] with Zygmunt Bauman’s Collateral Damage.[2] In Modern Social Imaginaries, Taylor described the long march of the Western European and North American social imaginary to individualism, presumed equal participation in…
By: Sharenda Roam on January 23, 2014
Let me tell you, if you will, about a book that completely changed my attitude. As a faculty member in higher education it is my responsibility to assist students in their learning process. When I was an undergrad student studying at the university it seemed some professors decided that their job was to “break down”…
By: Becky Stanley on January 23, 2014
Most mission agencies, NGO’s, churches and philanthropic institutions whether representing missions, or serving orphans, providing aid for disaster relief or development programs have experienced a decline in donations. On the surface the obvious reason stated is the Global Financial Crisis. But I sense a deeper crisis, one that is sad and nonchalantly stated as ‘compassion…
By: Sandy Bils on January 23, 2014
After reading the first three pages, I looked up our module schedule again, to make sure, that I didn’t order the wrong book by accident. I assumed, that the book I was reading was not on the reading list for our doctor of ministry program. (Especially after reading Charles Taylors challenging magnus opus “A Secular…
By: Sam Stephens on January 23, 2014
The ‘Bhopal Gas Tragedy’ as the incident is widely known, happened in North India in 1984 as a result of the leakage of toxic gasses from a chemical plant. The Indian public was awakened on a large scale for the first time to the dire consequences of disregard for the environment. The incident took the lives…
