September | 2016 | Make Mexico Pay for the Blog

Flannels and Avocado Toast and Hipsters, Oh My!

The secret is out: hipsters are not the individuals they so dream to be. All their craft beer, funky and folky music, flannels, and vintage tees, although are now trendy, were not created by the individual. Instead the hipster phenomena has always been shared amongst many people, and now even welcomed into pop culture. http://dustinland.com/dlands/dland.hipster.jpg…

Keep Pounding: The Founding of New Football Fans

Perrin’s speculations on political involvement and individuality assume a Goffman-style analysis of identity. He writes, “people observe a complicated world of schemas…, groups, and behaviors, and try to match their own behaviors to the kind of person they believe they are or want to be (77). He seems to be arguing that we perform different…

I Am Not Throwing Away My Vote!

One of the biggest names in current pop culture is that of Hamilton: An American Musical. This creative piece humanizes the life of one of our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton; and, like many young adults who love the world of politics, art, or both, I am obsessed with it. One of the show-stopping songs is…

The Grid Brings All the Boys to the Yard

The Grid Brings All the Boys to the Yard Personally, I am disastrous at directions. I would be lost somewhere in the great state of North Carolina right now if it weren’t for Google maps. That being said, the only cities that I am somewhat able to navigate are cities laid out like a grid,…

We’ve Been “Feeling the Bern” for a Long Time Now

The startling and unexpected emergence of Bernie Sanders as a legitimate political candidate was answered with a chorus of retorts from people mourning what would happen to their personal freedoms should such a man be elected. How could the United States, a nation that values free enterprise and protection from government involvement, elect a socialist,…

Where Did All the People Go?

[From Grace D.] Growing up an hour from Chicago, seeing homeless people in the city was only natural. This being said, when I visited NYC right before coming back to Wake, I was surprised when the streets were free of the disabled, frequent beggars, and the one homeless person directing profane comments at passersby. By…

How A Zombie Outbreak Affects The State

Hypothetically, a state will exist at nearly any given time. This state comes with a certain set of responsibilities in order to function properly. In Seeing Like A State, James Scott asserts that the most important political motives driving a state are “appropriation, control, and manipulation” (77). Should a state be unable to gauge its…

Attempts to Make the Districts Legible

Within a world where The Capital controls every aspect of human life, there is a state fighting for unrestricted power and control. The constant struggle for power and a fight for justice is the underlying theme in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The Capital sought to simplify the conduct of the Districts to align with…

The Hunger Games: Where the Districts Have “Order” Because We Can Count Twelve of Them

In his work Seeing Like a State, James Scott makes the observation that any state or governing body requires some extent of social organization. High levels of migration and complex city landscapes can make collecting taxes or policing populations extremely difficult. While modern civilizations with civil engineers, extensive personal records, and national languages have been…

Order and Chaos

The law of disorder, which Albert Einstein calls the most basic law of science, states that everything, when left on its own, leads to chaos. The state has an important job to try to counteract this occurrence by new reconstructions and regulations in many realms of life. In Seeing Like a State, James Scott discusses…