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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2657 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 7, 2023

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Totally different but I have this on order at my local bookstore after reading this interview with the author. He seems to be talking primarily about fashion, but of course fashion can mean anything from how a pair of pants is cut to what books we read to what Gods we pray to and what political opinions we hold.

His argument seems to be that status is created in fashion by distinctiveness, and that fashionistas are constantly contrarians trying to create change, but that in order for a change to really take hold it has to have a story behind it that people believe in. Something of a fashion version of Friedman's dictate that

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

W David Marx is great, I used to read his blog neomarxisme years ago. I didn't realize he had a new book out. Thanks for posting.

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