Showing 1 - 5 of 5 Items
"Pandemic Consumer Portfolio" by Sabrina Lin (Class of 2020) Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Sabrina Lin
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
"Pandemic Consumer Portfolio" by Xin Jiang (Class of 2020) Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Xin Jiang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
"Portfolio" by Clare Murphy (Class of 2020) Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Clare Murphy
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
"COVID-19 Pandemic May 2020 Portfolio" by Gemma Jyothika Kelton (Class of 2022)
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Gemma Jyothika Kelton
Access: Open access
- I was a student of this class (GSWS 2261: Gender, Film, and Consumer Culture) that examined the impact of COVID-19 on not only our smaller Bowdoin community, but also the larger global society as a whole. Author is class of 2022.
Chambers of Reflection: Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Self-Government in the Digital Age
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: John Sweeney
Access: Open access
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville each warn that the dominant cultures of their days may hinder the project of self-government. Against the backdrop of advancing Enlightenment philosophy, Rousseau writes that as social visibility increases relative to intimate connection, the drive for recognition corrupts self-love. Following the American and French revolutions, Tocqueville explores the democratic erosion of social hierarchies. He writes that a rise in individualism may obscure “self-interest well-understood”—the perspective gained through collaboration with others, thoughtful reflection, and reverence for truths that lie beyond the dictates of cursory instincts. In this project, I apply these political theories to the Digital Age. I explain how the distinction between the physical world and the digital realm has actualized Rousseau’s depiction of double men, “always appearing to relate everything to others and never relating anything except to themselves alone.” In the era of social distancing, technological evolution threatens to induce regression in the sociability and reflective agency that promote our capacity for self-government. Accordingly, I argue that Rousseau’s theory of corrupted drive for recognition and Tocqueville’s theory of individualism inform a new danger to political freedom: digital tribalism.