Earlier posts have raised the possibility that Michigan's jobs crisis will lead to significant population loss (link, link, link). The basic idea is this: Michigan has lost more than 800,000 jobs since 2002. Its population in 2002 was about 10 million. The current unemployment rate in the state is about 15%, or just under. In …
What now for Michigan?
The Detroit Regional Chamber Leadership Conference at Mackinac has come and gone. Leaders from all sectors in Southeast Michigan participated in discussions about how the state might move forward and regain the vitality and quality of life that the state has lost in the past decade. All agree that the state faces very tough challenges. …
Red shirts as a social movement
The redshirts in Thailand have moved onto the world stage in the past several months. Massive protests in Bangkok have stymied the Thai government and have held the army and police forces at bay for months. Demands from redshirt leaders and posters include removal of the military-backed government of Prime Minister Abhisit and a commitment …
Revitalizing our cities
It is hard to think of an American city that is doing really well these days. Dense urban poverty in the core, super-high rates of unemployment, failing schools for many urban children, high rates of crime, chronic and overwhelming fiscal crises resulting from too little public revenue for needed public services, and health outcome discrepancies …
Contentious politics in China
By official count, the incidence of popular protest in China has increased ten-fold in the past fifteen years. Kevin O'Brien and Rachel Stern report that the Chinese state reported 8,700 "collective incidents" in 1993, and this number had grown to 87,000 by 2005 (12). And the issues that have evoked protest have expanded as well: …
Zomia — James Scott on highland peoples
James Scott opens his most recent book with quotations from frustrated pre-modern administrators and missionaries whose territories included the peoples of inaccessible highland regions -- Guizhou, highland Burma, and Appalachia. Scott finds that the geographical circumstances of highland peoples mark them apart from the political organizations of the valleys; states could control agriculture, surplus, and …
Detroit: Taking charge of our story
New Detroit (link) and Wayne State University are putting on a major and significant conference on how the story of Detroit is being told today. Detroit is getting a lot of press these days --and it's mostly about crisis, decline, and despair. It is hard for a city to move forward in the context of …
High modernism and expert knowledge
James Scott is one of the really exceptional social scientists of his generation. His contributions to peasant studies have been transformative -- his ideas of the "moral economy of the peasant" and "weapons of the weak" are now part of the tool set that we all use in trying to make sense of agrarian societies …
Labor abuses in China
The world press has begun to find ways of documenting the conditions of workers in many of the factories in China devoted to manufacturing goods for export to the United States and other countries (for example, In Chinese Factories, NYT, 1/5/08). The reportage is eye-opening but not surprising. Reporters have documented excessive hours of work, pay …
Protests in China
http://www.youtube.com/v/QV292LiZOd0&hl=en&fs=1 Video: Carrefour protest in Beijing China has witnessed a visible increase over the past ten years in the number of protests, demonstrations, and riots over a variety of issues. Areas of social problems that have stimulated collective protests include factory conditions, non-payment of wages, factory closures, environmental problems (both large and small), and land …
Understanding Society 