Month: August 2013

I am helping re-translate Max Weber’s classic essay „Politics as Vocation“ from the original German into English.  One problem that emerged regards how to translate the German word Führer, which is key to the essay, into English.  Führer is of course a word that most English-speakers are aware of because of how Adolf Hitler used it between 1933-1945.  But Max Weber though wrote in 1919, and had (presumably) never heard of Hitler who at the time was simply a washed-up Austrian corporal beginning to take an interest in politics.…

There is a report from AAA that Horace/Harold Miner’s 1956 article “Body Image Among the Nacirema” is the most downloaded from the AAA journals for 2012.  It was downloaded over 11,000 times in 2012.

Missing from AAA’s statement about the Nacirema article is a basic distinction about the article which is that it is not “science,” but “fiction,” or maybe “satire.”  Yep, the Nacirema are a made up “tribe,” as legions of delighted undergrads who have read the article have discovered for 57 years.…