[W]ie immer bei Politik ist die Bürokratie das Instrument, mit dem das Desiderat zur Ausführung – und zum Entgleisen gebracht werden kann.
Niklas Luhmann – Das Deutsch der Geschlechter
Mit dem Fußball ist deshalb die Frage verbunden, ob nicht er es sei, der die in Lebensstile und Szenen auseinanderstrebende spätmoderne Gesellschaft zusammenhalte?
Jochen Bonz – Fußball – soziales Band der spätmodernen Gesellschaft? Beobachtungen an zwei Habitus der Fußballbegeisterung.
Dogs, it seems, are Aristotelians, but with their own doggy teleology. Their goals are not only radically different from ours; they are often invisible to us. To get a better view, Horowitz proposes that we humans get down intellectually on all fours and start sniffing.
Cathleen Schine – Inside of a Dog – What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
Lucha libre is thus constructed around the public secret of the fixed ending. Yet the secret of the fixed ending is only one of a number of back secrets, of stories told and stories hidden, of secrets revealed to conceal still others. The secrecy of the fix stands for a series of dissimulations, for the mystery that animates the genre.
Heather Levi – The World of Lucha Libre – Trade secrets and revelations
[T]here’s a very real chance that the Obama/Joker image is in itself meaningless. This is not to say, however, that the context is meaningless, or that the image is worthless. Quite the contrary, in fact – just because we can’t affix objective meaning to a given cultural artifact doesn’t mean there is nothing to learn.
Whitney Phillips – Unmasking the Joker
[E]very story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings [...] and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale.
Michael Chabon – The Wilderness of Childhood
While all meetings have an officially scripted agenda, their tacit agenda is power. Meetings establish who is in charge. When someone calls a meeting, he or she is asserting authority over those who are called on to attend. Meetings are exclusive and closed. In most corporations, who gets invited to a meeting—and who does not—sends a signal about who’s “in the loop”. Meetings are a form of social grooming inside organizations. Meetings impose vertical authority. They establish status hierarchies. [...] When power is diffused and distributed more democratically, meetings are no longer necessary. But corporations are not democracies.
Matthew Fraser – Enterprise 2.0: Wiki While You Work