Years of Poems and Spirits

The recent incident of cartoon marketing in Boston would be an example of what Migdal’s “boundary” issue.

Afterall, how “public” public place truely is? What is the boundary of the public sphere? It is OK for Joe to post a giant sign in public asking Jane’s hand on V. Day. And it is not OK for a private company to conduct guerrilla marketing as the two young punks did in Boston. But what about anit-smoking league doing the same stunt on Cancer Day (if there is such a thing)?

As much as I admire Migdal, I have a hard time to totally buy in his boundary theory. First, I don’t see the relevance. I asked him in class too: OK I see the “boundary effects” all over the society but so what? I have already given up any hope that social science can be “prescriptive”. But I still have a hard time to forgo the belief that, even among “descriptive” theories, there are different levels of relevance. Although I don’t know how one could go about and measure this “level of relevance”, the word “relevance” is not the first thing come to my mind with regard to the boundary theory. Second, I think his approach is a little structualistic. After all, boundaries are demarcation lines but all I see everyday is shaded gray.

Couple of days ago, saw Martin Scorsese’s documentary on early post WII Italian movies (IMHO a series of tear jerkers epitomized by Cinema Paradiso). He made the comment that there is a difference between society and community: the essence of a society is law. But the essence of a community is love.

It is such a nice thing to say but the law is as much as an expression of faith (e.g. the Preamble in the U.S. Constitution) as a fascis and the love is hardly unconditional–forgot who said that villagers somewhere in the world would rather sell their daughters than defaulting on community rotating credit association.