As the manuscript for our edited book on Café Society was dispatched to the publisher, the American branch of Palgrave Macmillan, I took the decision to write a paper arising out of four decades of personal café usage. The purpose would be twofold: (a) to reflect on the parameters of this varied and varying usage, as a… Read More »
In this fourth in a sequence of blogs on the theories of Jurgen Habermas I move on to consider his use of the concepts of lifeworld and system. These receive their fullest expression in his magisterial two-volume ‘Theory of Communicative Action’, although many of the theories pre-existed this treatise. One enduring problem Habermas set out… Read More »
This third blog on our trip on the Trans-Siberian railway takes us from Irkurtsk ever onwards. Saturday 11 August We were due to reach Irkutsk in the early hours of Sunday morning, so this was out last full day on board for a while. Respite from the journey was, I suspect, eagerly anticipated, a chance… Read More »
At least this second blog gets us on the train. So here goes: Wednesday 8 August Ken, Nigel and I made our way mid-mooning to Moscow’s Red Square. Taking a circuitous route through GUM, we stood in line behind a group of Americans outside Lenin’s Mausoleum. I waited for one of them to ask ‘who… Read More »
If I were to be pushed into declaring a stand-out café, a one-off port-of-call, it would not be difficult to respond. Kaldi’s at 941 Decatur Street in New Orleans would be my choice. Sadly it is no more. I visited this Bohemian ‘coffeehouse coffeemuseum’ several times during its existence from 1990 to 2000 (word is,… Read More »
In one of those ad hoc conversations in a local café in the autumn of 2000, two old friends (Ken and Janet) invited Annette and I to accompany them on a journey on the Trans-Siberian railway, starting in Moscow, ending in Beijing. Within what seemed like moments, and somewhere in the midst of a couple… Read More »
I think Habermas’ ‘Legitimation Crisis’ one of his more neglected books. Published in Germany in the early 1970s it has proved remarkably perspicacious. In this third blog on his work I give a brief outline of his argument, then ask why I judge it so compelling and what salience it has now. In the era… Read More »
This is the third and final blog of the drive from Atlanta to Los Angeles, San Diego and back, a way of filling and slightly exceeding a mid-semester break in teaching at Emory University. Saturday 14 March It was not the earliest of starts as we made the trip to downtown El Paso, parking as… Read More »
This is the second blog of our long mid-semester drive to and beyond the Grand Canyon in 1998. Tuesday 10 March We were relieved to find it dry and sunny when we awoke. We completed the final 80 miles to a highly organized tourist complex, stopping only for a swift coffee at the most up-market… Read More »
During our mid-term break as visiting Professors of Sociology at Emory University (in Atlanta, Georgia) in 1998, Annette and I went for a drive. Intending to get as far as the Grand Canyon, we ended up targeting more distant horizons. As we progressed I kept a diary for my father, then in his 80s, and… Read More »