intellectual properties

elsewhere, USA

some of you might remember that i interned at the Breakthrough Institute (http://www.thebreakthrough.org) last year for 6 months, and i really can’t speak highly enough of their work and their drive and their vision. Breakthrough Senior Fellow and NYU chair of Sociology, Dalton Conley, is speaking about his new book tomorrow in Berkeley. $10, but it is more than a book signing and should be really interesting.

“Thriving in Elsewhere USA”
“A Conversation With One of America’s Greatest Living Sociologists.”
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: First Congregational Church of Berkeley
Street: 2345 Channing Way
City/Town: Berkeley, CA

For decades society has changed, but our social and economic policy hasn’t kept up. We live differently, work differently, and raise our children differently today than ever before, but our social contract with the government dates back to the 1930s and 1960s.

In a groundbreaking new book that Publishers Weekly has already called “prescient” — Elsewhere, USA: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety — Breakthrough Senior Fellow and NYU Professor Dalton Conley offers a new look at how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped the world are also reshaping our daily lives – and what this means for a new social contract for the 21st century….

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Welcome to Elsewhere, USA, where the American individual has become extinct. Acclaimed sociologist Dalton Conley looks closely at a population of intraviduals – fractured people who struggle to juggle professional, familial, and personal pursuits. Gone are the days when professionals could count on clearly-defined work days with the same company for twenty years, and clearly defined roles within the family to come home to. Instead, today’s citizens of Elsewhere must try to satisfy their various selves simultaneously. By examining three arenas – economic, familial, and technological – Conley is able to illustrate how we have all become inhabitants of Elsewhere, where division between home and office has been all but demolished; our wireless economy encourages us to work 24/7, marketing has invaded the most intimate aspects of our lives, and leisure has become a lost art. Conley, university professor of the social sciences and chair of sociology at New York University, offers an essential understanding of how these changes have reshaped our world and our lives. Dalton Conley’s essays have appeared in numerous publications; his previous books include Being Black, Living in the Red, Honky, and The Pecking Order. Joining Conley in conversation this evening are Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute, authors of Break Through and The Death of Environmentalism; both were named Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment 2008”. There is a cover charge of $10 per person.

(facebook event)

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