David Eden,Autonomy: Capitalism,Class and Politics

The urban street is a significant canvas within the material cartography of the nation-state's spatial frontier. Between March and May of 2010, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, also known as the “Red Shirts,” painted Bangkok red as one of the most cohesive assemblage of street protests in Thai political history. Each protestor donated ten cubic centimeters of blood to be poured at several sites, including the Government House of Thailand, the ruling Democrat Party headquarters, and the Prime Minister's residence. Other vials were used to paint murals along the walls of the Old City. The intensified aesthetic presence of Thailand's rural voting majority challenged a historic marginality in the Thai polity, and was one of many semiotic tactics that foreshadowed the violence of the eventual military intervention under the name “Operation Reclaim Space.” The city itself was projected as a wounded body, while the Red Shirts—as Thongchai Winichakul [“The ‘Germs’: The Reds' Infection of the Thai Political Body,” New Mandala, May 3, 2010, available online at < http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/05/03/thongchai-winichakul-on-the-red-germs/#more-9382>] so observed at the time—were heavily objectified as germs invading the sanitary walls of the city. This approach to protest in Bangkok treats the development of the contemporary polis as an urban physiology, simultaneously driven by an intensification of presence and the “good health” prerogatives of acceptable citizenship in the global city.     

David Riesman: A Personal Appreciation

David Riesman, the Harvard sociologist, rose to eminence in the 1950s as one of America’s most influential “public intellectuals,” gaining renown as principal author of the must-read sociological classic of the time, The Lonely Crowd. In that work, Riesman accounted for something of a sea-change in American life, marked by his famous distinction between inner-directed and other-directed character-types, and in such a convincing fashion that the book became a watershed in post-war America’s understanding of itself. Beyond that, Riesman continued to carry out urbane studies of a wide-ranging array of subjects, all the while actively engaged in the major political–ideological–ethical controversies and torments of his time. As something of a principled yet reasoned “Establishmentarian” contrarian, Riesman extended the work of such incisive social thinkers as Tocqueville, Max Weber, Veblen, and George Orwell. In this personal appreciation, Michael Delaney charts his acquaintanceship with Riesman, going back to the early 1960s (Riesman acted as a kind of mentor to Delaney at a distance; the two never met in person and their association was carried on solely through letters spanning some three decades). The essay surveys Riesman’s intellectual legacy as a self-conceived ethnographer of American life, and dwells on his “exceptionalism” as a generous, caring, high-minded man of principle, discerning judgment, and exemplary character.