Decades Ago, the Sociologist Erving Goffman Had the Answer
In the spring of 2020, when masks abruptly became a common sight in the United States, they introduced a new element into our social relations. They hampered our ability to communicate, muffling our voices and hiding our smiles.
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How has religious experience changed in a secular age?
Originally published December 28, 2020 in The Nation
Last May, the writer Tara Isabella Burton published a piece in the New York Times Sunday Review about a nascent faith community.
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A tour of contemporary fandom
Anyone can be a fan, and almost everyone is. Perhaps this low bar to entry explains why fans don’t get much respect: a fan is a follower, a hanger-on, one in a crowd of interchangeable masses.
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Michael Pollan and Leslie Jamison, sober and intoxicated
Originally published June 5, 2018 in The Nation
In December of 1934, an unemployed stockbroker named Bill Wilson checked himself into Towns Hospital in Manhattan. He had a habit of consuming more than two quarts of whiskey per day, and his wife had implored him to get help.
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Jane Jacobs's clear-eyed vision of humanity
Originally published February 3, 2017 in The Nation
In 1956, Jane Jacobs was 39 years old, working as a staff writer at Architectural Forum. Her boss, unable to attend a conference at Harvard, asked her to go in his stead and give a talk on land banking.
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