Democracy’s Saintly Challenger India is no stranger to protest movements, hunger strikes, and the mass mobilization of citizens for a popular cause. But the recent fast by the Gandhian leader Anna Hazare, culminating in an extraordinary Saturday session of Parliament to pass a resolution acceding to his main demands, marked a dramatic departure in the country’s politics.

The Anna phenomenon reflects a “perfect storm” of converging factors: widespread disgust with corruption, particularly after two recent high-profile cases of wrongdoing (in allocating telecoms spectrum and awarding contracts for the Commonwealth Games); the organizational skill of a small group of activists committed to transforming India’s governance practices; the mass media’s perennial search for a compelling story; and the availability of a saintly figure to embody the cause. It also raises important questions about civil society’s role in a democracy.
posted by infini on Sep 7, 2011 - 42 comments

The Sharing Economy (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 5, 2011 - 12 comments

Life after Capitalism - Beyond capitalism, it seems, stretches a vista of... capitalism: [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jan 25, 2011 - 33 comments

The experimental method: Testing solutions with randomized trials -- In trying to help explicate the complexity of society Clark Medal-winner Esther Duflo is raising the productivity of social policies by increasing our knowledge of what works and doesn't work through repeated social experiments of randomised controlled trials. She has a large surplus labour pool, a veritable industrial reserve army, to worth with. [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 19, 2010 - 18 comments

Big Brother 101 -- Could your social networks brand you an enemy of the state? (Popular Science Mag) And one staffer finds out it might--due to a connection to the Buffalo Six. Think 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with tapping and surveillance and worse at the other end.
posted by amberglow on Sep 22, 2006 - 15 comments

Burning Man 2005 ... 100 photos by Scott London. (note: some nudity. may not be safe for work.)
posted by crunchland on Jan 8, 2006 - 65 comments

Mix It Up Day is an effort from the people at Tolerance.org to get teens to sit with other social groups at lunch in the cafeteria today. Coming from a racially diverse "inner city" Midwest high school, I've seen how teens will naturally segregate themselves, so this seems like an interesting proposal. Kids who participated seemed excited about the opportunity, but will they keep "mixing it up" tomorrow, next week, as they become adults?
posted by katieinshoes on Nov 21, 2002 - 23 comments

Maybe there's hope for our social lives after all. A new study (complete report here) seems to directly contradict February's study which claimed that the Internet makes people antisocial hermits. This new study is particularly focused on the habits of women who use the web but offers many interesting numbers that apply across gender lines, i.e. "Nearly three-quarters of Internet users (72%) say they visited family or friends "yesterday," while 61% of nonusers report they had visited someone".
posted by Sapphireblue on May 10, 2000 - 2 comments