The Empire of Value

A New Foundation for Economics

COV&R Bulletin

 

Mainstream economists are hopeless romantics. They believe in the enduring value of things and refuse to admit that economics is all about money. In The Empire of Value, André Orléan contests the very notion that things have an intrinsic value...


Married to Shadow

Sylvia Plath's dark desire

bookhaven.stanford.edu

 

Her father's death when she was eight left Sylvia Plath – in the words of her poem “The Colossus” – “married to shadow.” When Plath killed herself at age 30, many blamed her husband, poet Ted Hughes. But Plath’s suicide likely had much deeper roots...


 "Dare Me"

When cheerleading becomes a hunger game

www.houseofflout.com

 

Look at Emily. Isn’t she the picture of perfection? There’s no sexier girl on the high school cheer squad. The boys like her just the way she is.

 

But not Coach. She thinks the poor girl is fat...


Anti-Globalization protest

Global Markets, Anonymous Victims

Talking to Mark Anspach

The UNESCO Courier

 

In our great metropolises, hundreds of homeless people die each year. We don't even know their names. The market economy has not rid us of sacrifice. And yet, its rationality was supposed to distance us from ritual violence...

 


Isabelle Caro No Anorexia Nolita billboard

Why Did Isabelle Caro Die?

Mixed messages in an anorexic model's death

www.journaldumauss.net

 

It was a shocking one-two punch: first anorexic model Isabelle Caro died in a French hospital, then the distraught mother killed herself. Coming so soon after her daughter's death, Marie Caro's suicide reopened the debate about the causes of anorexia....


Rene Girard at home in Paris – 1990

René Girard's Legacy

www.imitatio.org

 

Sometimes the greatest ideas appear to be simple ones. The famed critic and cultural theorist René Girard gave the world a set of deceptively simple ideas that have changed the way we think...


Qaddafi hanged in effigy

Lynching Qaddafi

bookhaven.stanford.edu

 

The Libyans didn't get it.

 

With everyone agreeing Qaddafi was a monster, the outcry over the way he died caught the rebels by surprise...