While I was Away ...

Stuff I would have blogged about, had I been blogging last week:

Charles Tilly: the distinguished sociologist who died at 78 said he never held office in a professional association, never chaired a department, never got chosen for a jury (link). Hey, that’s me to the life! Okay granted, I never wrote 51 books, either…

The awfulness in Upper Austria: the last thing I want to do is to seem to be flippant about the irredeemably dreadful story of the guy who kept his daughter in the basement as his sex slave—and of how this is kind of the second time this sort of thing has happened lately, in the same neighborhood. But just a brief two cents’ worth: could it be the architecture? I mean—how many houses do you know of where they even have a basement where you could hide somebody that long and that well? Where they even have a basement?

The Rev. Wright (aka, Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy): I really haven’t caught much of his act, but from what little I hear/see, I’d say he is smart and entertaining in a Rush Limbaugh sort of way. My concern is not that Obama hangs out with him—as a listless nonbeliever, I have to forgive worse nonsense than Rev. Wright, almost every day. My concern is that Obama should not have been blindsided by this: it’s one more proof (there have been too many) that this truly attractive human being may just lack the killer instinct.

Historical footnote to the above: I used to know a guy who trained urban organizers for the Saul Alinsky community development movement. One thing about these black preachers (he said), they never let you see their mailing list. They may cooperate with you, and they may do you a lot of good. But they have their own agenda and they know they are going to be there when you’re gone. Obama should have known that, too.

Best blog entry of the week: James Fallows, on why Bill Gates never learned the truth about Clippy (link).

Three of a Kind

What do these guys have in common: Charles Tilly and Dani Rodrik? Okay, maybe a lot of things, but what's the answer I'm looking for? Here's a hint: throw in a third name--A. O. Hirschman? Answer: Tilly and Rodrik are the first two winners of the Hirschman Prize, awarded by the Social Science Research Council (link). But it's more than that: the extra fillip is that I really can't think of a major award where the award and the recipients have so much in common--in common, that is, not so much in terms of content as of style. They're all original and creative, but so are a lot of other people. What's interesting about these three is that they seem to have an extraordinary openness to possibilities from more or less obvious ideas that don't seem to have been obvious (until they wrote) to anyone else--a kind of Mozartean ease in making the hitherto unnoticed appear inevitable. No point in detailing the entire record, but let me commend one of the best economics books I ever read--Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty; and one of the best books about politics--Tilly's Coercion, Capital and European States (1992); and about the best economics book I've read in the past year-Rodrik's One Economics, Many Recipes (2007).

The SSRC blurb on Hirschman says he wrote "some of the most provocative books in the social sciences, on recurring themes of economic development, political democracy, and the surprising relationships between the two" (link). That's a pretty good capsule summary of all three.

H/T: Crooked Timber.

Aftethought: Oh, and here's a nominee for next year (link).