How "Marriage" Has Changed over Thousands of Years
“Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands,” said Steven Mintz, a history professor at Columbia University.
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![thepoliticalnotebook:
Byline gap, anyone? The folks over at the Op Ed Project give you their latest data in graph form: here are the numbers on how many women and how many men are publishing op-eds on different topics. Surprise, women are vastly under-represented in the opinion discussions about economy, security, international politics, etc… (FYI: It isn’t because there aren’t women out there writing and thinking and opining intelligently about these things.)
[Feministing]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4wb2vjqwz1qchhhqo1_500.jpg)
Byline gap, anyone? The folks over at the Op Ed Project give you their latest data in graph form: here are the numbers on how many women and how many men are publishing op-eds on different topics. Surprise, women are vastly under-represented in the opinion discussions about economy, security, international politics, etc… (FYI: It isn’t because there aren’t women out there writing and thinking and opining intelligently about these things.)
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From “No Middle Ground: America’s Growing Income Segregation” by Kendra Bischoff and Sean Reardon (Boston Review, May/June 2012)
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Ex-Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer is dropping out of the presidential race. A look at the political and personal demons that fueled his feisty campaign.
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Lessig Blog, v2: Commencement Address to Atlanta's John Marshall Law School
I was asked to post the text to the Commencement Address I gave at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School on May, 19. With some hesitation (as tongue-in-cheek gets lost in writing), and with one important clarification (the corruption alleged was mine!), I post it here.
I am a professor of law…
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Kids play T-ball, then baseball; they play games and have practice every week and, if they’re serious about it, pre-season and post-season too. We never think, “Let’s have kids play baseball for eight weeks in seventh grade,” and then expect that in five years they can join the majors or even be on a college team. But for some reason we do this with civics. We say, “We’re going to have you do a penny harvest in fifth grade and a service learning project in tenth grade, and then we’ll teach you abstractly about government for a semester in twelfth grade.” Then our students enter the major leagues of citizenship, and we give them the vote and expect them to keep our country going. And that’s just crazy!Meira Levinson talking about her new book No Citizen Left Behind.
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The Antidepressant Wars
The suffering of depressed people does not justify the misdeeds of the pharmaceutical industry, nor does it minimize the drugs’ deleterious effects on some patients. However, discussion of antidepressants’ value should not forget this suffering or imagine that it is insignificant or suspect. In my experience, antidepressants are neither happy pills nor placebos; they are the difference between life and living death.
From Sandra J. Tanenbaum’s “The Antidepressant Wars: A Fierce Debate That Ignores Patients” (Boston Review, May/June 2012)
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Forum: How Markets Crowd Out Morals
Shout
Michael J. Sandel
Some economists think markets can benefit all spheres of human activity. But they’re wrong: markets can erode important goods and social norms.
Not only are there some things money can’t buy, but there are also many things it shouldn’t.
Responses
Richard Sennett
When the market is everywhere, we lead a socially impoverished existence.
Matt Welch
Because Sandel disagrees with people’s choices, he wants to take those choices away.
Anita L. Allen
Financial incentives are improperly used to induce African Americans to embrace “good” behaviors.
Debra Satz
Debating the place of the market is less about the value of goods than about inequality.
Herbert Gintis
Tolerance, equality, and democracy have only flourished in market societies.
Lew Daly
Making money, formerly an exclusive realm of cosmic evil, is now “doing God’s work.”
Samuel Bowles
Even market enthusiasts know that society can’t function if people are the amoral, self-interested calculators of blackboard economics.
Elizabeth Anderson
The profit motive is corrupting the justice system.
John Tomasi
Free markets are a kind of fairness.
Michael J. Sandel replies
By keeping markets in their place, we can avoid their corrosive effects.
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About
Boston Review is a magazine of ideas, independent and nonprofit. We cover lots of ground—politics, poetry, film, fiction, book reviews, and criticism. But a few premises tie it all together: that democracy depends on public discussion; that sometimes understanding means going deep; that vast inequalities are unjust; that human imagination breaks free from neat political categories; and that powerful images are worth piles of words.
Posts of Interest
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Keith camped out in his dad’s heated garage for the better part of 2011, hoping...
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In a nation as diverse as the United States, the idea of “the American dream” means different things to different people. Many associate the dream...
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Gyre by Chris Jordan
Composed of 2.4 million pieces of plastic, which is the estimated number of pounds of plastic that enter the...
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German police have detailed 400 anti-capitalist “Blockupy” protesters today for defying a recent bill that banned...
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